


Here We Are We're Back Again

by Krasimer



Series: For Many Years We've Been All Alone [8]
Category: Five Nights at Freddy's
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Android Foxy, Android Mike, Androids, Continued from other parts, Future Tech, Ghosts, I have returned to this fandom, M/M, Non-animatronic characters, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rescue Missions, long series, sentient animatronics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-10
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2018-08-21 18:36:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 42,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8256191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Krasimer/pseuds/Krasimer
Summary: "They're showing static. Not even a blacked out screen, just static. Like some of the transmitting equipment is broken down.""Yikes," came the voice of his boyfriend over the line. "That ain't good.""No," he reached into his pocket and pulled out a nametag. As he attached it to his chest, he grinned a little too wide for it to be actually happy. "It's not," he smoothed down the collar of his work shirt, the elevator going dark except for a red-lit button that shone onto the stark black and white of his badge, revealing his name.
  M. Schmidt.





	1. Night One -- Entering The Building

"Her name is Circus Baby," the man scanned through the files he'd been sent as he walked into the building. There was an earpiece attached to his head, wirelessly connected to the phone in his pocket. "The other three are Ballora, Funtime Freddy, and Funtime Foxy. Looks like there's also some secondary animatronics, smaller ones."

"Any clue as ta what's goin' on inside?"

"No, just says something about them being hired out for birthdays instead of performing all together at once. Each one gets hired individually, think there might have been an example set. Those in charge didn't like it, I guess," he shrugged, looking around the lobby he'd arrived in. "Are there supposed to be people here? It looks completely empty."

A few clicking noises sounded through the speaker as he waited for an answer. "Looks like you're alone fer yer shift."

"Doesn't that seem familiar..." the man sighed as he tucked the tablet into his bag. "Too familiar. I don't like too familiar, not in this situation. Familiar means ghosts, death, corpses shoved into walls."

"We just need ta know what's happenin' in there."

"I know."

"I'm still not the biggest fan o' you goin' in there, lovely. Ain't anythin' other than dangerous. Feels like danger down to me wires and I don't want ye hurt. Already went through that, canno' do it again."

The man laughed as he pressed the button for the elevator. "Don't worry, I'm going to be okay."

"Ye don't know that."

"I know I'm a lot better prepared than another poor schmuck they'd get to do this job. I've got more than two decades worth of experience with this sort of thing, I dealt with you guys when you were all possessed."

The elevator was talking at him but he paid barely any attention to it as he continued to speak to his boyfriend. "I'm not going to let them trap any more sentient animatronics, not after what was done the last time. You were hard to free, I don't want something harder to fight against to free others."

"Just...Be careful."

"I will be."

He tried to type his name when prompted, the screen flickering and unsteady. It autocorrected to something entirely wrong and he sighed. "At least we know one thing," he ran a hand down his face.

"What's that?"

"They're taking care of the tech just as well here as they did when I first signed up."

"Ouch, that's damning, lad."

"I know. That's kind of why I said it. The system is glitching and not letting me type my name in the right way to sign in," he looked up, his eyes going wide as he stared at something above his head. "Holy shit."

"What?"

"There's a creepy clown mask mounted between the two screens that are probably supposed to be showing some view of the halls or something."

"Supposed to be?"

He shook his head slowly, both his eyebrows raised. "They're showing static. Not even a blacked out screen, just static. Like some of the transmitting equipment is broken down."

"Yikes," came the voice of his boyfriend over the line. "That ain't good."

"No," he reached into his pocket and pulled out a nametag. As he attached it to his chest, he grinned a little too wide for it to be actually happy. "It's not," he smoothed down the collar of his work shirt, the elevator going dark except for a red-lit button that shone onto the stark black and white of his badge, revealing his name.

_M. Schmidt._

"Wish me luck," he almost laughed as he said the words. "I'm going in."

"Don't die, Mike. Got some stuff to do back at home."

"Already died once," Mike brushed his hair out of his eyes. "Not going to do it again if I can help it."


	2. Night One -- Check The Stages

"Uh-oh, it looks like Ballora doesn't feel like dancing," the voice of the Hand Unit echoed in the small room. "Let's give her some motivation. Press the red button now to administer a controlled shock. Maybe that will put the spring back in her step."

Mike stared at the buttons, his mouth hanging open as he pulled his earpiece out of his pocket, sliding his thumb across his phone screen as he put it on. "Hey," he said without preamble. "I think we may need to get them out of here as fast as we possibly can. The system just encouraged me to zap one of them with a 'Controlled Shock' to put the 'Spring back in her step'. What," he looked at the lit-up button, went through the motions of swallowing. "What should I do?"

An angry snarl echoed back at him through the speakers and he winced. "Sorry, Fred just heard that. Got ye on speaker."

"Is the system going to let you do anything else without shocking her?"

"Hey Bonnefeld," Mike greeted quickly. "And no, I don't think so. My guide thing went quiet the moment the buttons lit up. Shock button red, lights button blue. I think we may have, as a group, set an example of how animatronics and androids shouldn't be allowed opinions and rights."

"Should I call Michelle and ask her to start gathering stuff to make new bodies?"

"Yeah," Mike let his fingers fall over the button. "I don't know...Should I?"

"The system won't let you continue until you do," Fred's voice was a low rumble as he spoke from off to the side. It was the furthest thing from happy that Mike had ever heard him be since they'd managed to give him back a working voice box. "So I...I hate having to say this, but I think you need to shock her."

"Just thinking about this is making me feel sick," Mike clenched his jaw as he hesitated over the button. "I'm going to apologize when we meet face to face, this is disgusting what they're doing to them."

The screech of electricity summoned by the push of the button made him stumble back several steps, his eyes wide as he stared at the machinery. "Holy shit," he whispered, struggling to stay upright. "That wasn't a controlled zap, they're literally potentially frying their circuits and destroying them to control them! They're doing what Orsani liked doing, that thing where they pretend to care about the animatronics and then letting them get destroyed over time."

"Let's check the light again," the system almost gleefully announced over his head. 

Mike approached the stand slowly, his fingers trembling as he pushed the button for the lights. On the stage behind the glass, he could see Ballora dancing gracefully. There were four little dancers around her that reminded him of the marionette. 

"Her secondary animatronics, looks like they're based off the marionette Rebecca possessed," he said quietly.

"Excellent. Ballora is feeling like her old self again and will be ready to perform again tomorrow," the system was speaking again and he wanted to take a hammer to its speakers. "Now view the window to your right. This is the Funtime Auditorium, where Funtime Foxy encourages kids to play and share. Try the light, let's see what Funtime Foxy is up to."

"Found their version of Foxy," he told the others. "If I remember right, this version is female-coded, like Reyna was?"

"Yeah," came Foxy's voice. "Dressed ta the nines in the same color scheme and all."

Mike nodded, even though they couldn't see him, and dragged both of his hands down his face. "I think I have to shock all of them into compliance. None of them want to be performing so none of them are on stage."

"We need to get them out of there," Bonnefeld's voice was almost a beacon of calm in the middle of the anger they were all feeling. 

"Yeah," Mike covered his mouth as he checked the lights on Funtime Foxy. "Shit, yeah, she's not on stage."

"Looks like Funtime Foxy is taking the day off. Let's motivate Funtime Foxy with a controlled shock."

"I don't want to!" he turned to look up at the speakers, glaring at them. "She doesn't want to be on stage at night, she doesn't have to be on stage at night! Give her a break!"

"Lad," his version of Foxy spoke up. "I think ye have ta..."

"Fuck," Mike snarled as he slammed his hand into the button quickly, drawing back as fast as he could. The hair-raising zap sounded again and he imagined he could hear a faint scream coming from the other room. "Please be back on stage, please be back on your stage. They're not going to let me do anything else until you're back on your sta- Fuck, she's not back on her stage."

"Let's try another controlled shock," the system suggested almost cheerfully. 

"Oh go screw yourself," he muttered at it before sighing and pushing the button again. 

This time, when he turned on the lights, Funtime Foxy was waving and dancing from her stage. "Looks like Funtime Foxy is in perfect working order. Great job! In front of you is another vent shaft. Crawl through it to reach the Circus Gallery Control Module."

"Why is there vent crawling, I do not like the vent crawling."

Foxy's worried voice crackled over the line after a moment. "At least yer a lot sturdier than you were when ye started this sort o' job."

"Yeah..." Mike took a deep breath, the soft glow of his internal systems showing through his eyes for a moment. "Here goes nothing. I think I'm checking on Circus Baby now. Wish me luck?"

"I wish ye all the luck in the world," Foxy's voice was soft. "Jus' be careful."

"I will be," Mike smiled as he curled his hand around his earpiece, kneeling down to open the vent. "You haven't gotten rid of me yet."

"Good."

Mike ended the call, took another deep breath in and out, then started crawling through. Once he got into the room, he stood up and looked around. Unlike the glass in the other room, this seemed murky, as if it hadn't been cleaned for a long time. When the voice started up again, he had already moved to the control panel. "Just get it over with," he urged the system. "Please."

"On the other side of the glass is Circus Baby's Auditorium. Let's check the light and see what Baby is up to," it answered. 

When Mike pressed the first button, he frowned."Looks like a few of the lights are out but we can fix that later. Let's encourage Baby to cheer up with a controlled shock."

"Uh, wait, what?"

He pressed the lights button again to the same result: The room was mostly dark except for one lone light right next to the glass. After a second of hesitating, he pressed the shock button. Nothing beyond the glass changed.

"Let's try another controlled shock."

Still nothing.

"Let's try _another_ controlled shock."

This time, it seemed that the system knew more than he did, the almost sinister shadows of the room made him frown as he watched and waited.

"Great job, Circus Baby! We knew we could count on you."

He breathed a sigh of relief and let his hand drop back to his side.

"That concludes your duties for your first night on the job. We don't want you to leave overwhelmed. Otherwise, you might not come back. Please leave using the vent behind you and we'll see you again tomorrow."

"Yeah," Mike headed for the vent, a cold prickle at the back of his neck. "See you tomorrow."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is a lot more frustrating to write than I wanted it to be. There is no transcript of the game audio yet.  
> I had to sit there and listen to the same five-second loops again, and again to type it out myself and then continue writing the chapter. Once my transcript (Minus the soap opera parts) is done, I will be posting it somewhere, likely my tumblr.
> 
> I hope you all enjoyed.


	3. Night Two - Arrival and Terror

"Welcome back for another night of intellectual stimulation, pivotal career choices, and self-reflection on past mistakes. We're committed to creating a unique and fulfilling work experience. One part of that commitment is ensuring that you don't get tired of the voice you are hearing right now. Using the keypad below, please select a new companion voice."

Mike laughed as he leaned against the wall of the elevator, hiding his face in his arm. 

Hand unit continued to speak, something about options and the keypad, pressing numbers. When he glanced at the screen, he started laughing all over again. It was glitching the same way it had before, unstable and unable to be used to type anything. This time, however, it was also missing the ability to type numbers as directed. A glitching alphabet flickered before his eyes and he shook his head, still laughing. 

"Mike?"

He covered his face with both of his hands, then sighed, his laughter subsiding. "Yeah, I'm still here."

"Michelle was sayin' she had a basic shell bodies for them. Nothin' special, jus' somethin' ta put them into until she can make custom ones. Want me ta send her to ye? From what you've been telling me, it sounds like they need ta get outta there as fast as they can."

"Yeah," Mike swallowed nervously. "I think that might be the best idea. Ballora's sensors are off, so I'll start there I think. The files notes left for me by the techs are saying she's blind or something, no reasons listed. I'll go into her room and find a corner to catch her attention from or something, tell her what's going on and then get her into the main room so Michelle has room to work."

The elevator spoke again when he tapped a button, but he ignored it. 

"I also think we're going to have problems getting them out. The vent shafts I'm crawling through are small, I barely fit," he gestured down at himself even though Foxy couldn't see it. "And you know me, I'm kind of small. I'm five feet and eight inches of not-that-big."

"Yeah, I know," Foxy's voice was fond. "Ye fit right under me chin, lad. I like your size."

"I'm not complaining about it either," Mike grinned. "But my point is that these guys are bigger than me by a bit and I don't think they'll fit through the vents."

He stepped out into the entrance room, then knelt down to crawl through the first vent. "And I don't know if their joints are flexible enough to allow it, either. Even if they could fit, I think I saw something about Ballora's legs being too stiff to allow her to walk normally. She dances everywhere."

Foxy growled unhappily, the sound of keys clacking in the background. "Messagin' Michelle right now, she'll help ye figure out how ta get them outta there. If," he paused, then typed some more. "She's sayin' she can only fit one of the shells in her car right now, she'll have ta make a second trip for the other two."

"Is Brianna coming with her?"

"Yeah, think so. She's mentionin' someone comin' with her, sounds like Bri."

Mike smiled. "Good, haven't seen Brianna in a while. It'll be good to be able to talk to her again."

When the Hand unit spoke again, Mike almost fell into another fit of laughter. Somehow, as a result of the button he'd pushed, the voice synthesizer had shifted to the voice of an upset teenager. 

"Lad?"

"You should hear the voice the system has right now. They want to keep their employees, so they allow certain things to be customizable. The system sounds like a teen whose mom cut off the wifi or something."

"Wait, really?"

Mike held up his phone and tapped into speaker phone mode. 

"Okay, let's start with your nightly chores...You should check on Ballora and make sure she's on her stage, but...Whatever."

Foxy's laughter set Mike off again, the two of them giggling together for a few minutes. "I can't wait until ye get home again," the former pirate said quietly, calming down. "I miss ye."

"I miss you too," Mike nodded, pulling his earpiece out and smushing the phone against the side of his face. "I know we had to set me up in a hotel room to make me look desperate enough for this job, but I hate this. I hate being away from you and I have trouble sleeping at night. Or...Well...I should probably call it recharging, it's been recharge mode for a long time, I should be used to the term," he sighed as he pressed his hand against his face. "I mean...There's a ridiculous soap opera I've been watching, something about a vampire and his girlfriend, but that's not really...Helpful. I miss my pirate captain."

"An' I miss my Mike."

"This will be done soon and then we'll have at least four to get acclimated to their new world."

"That we will."

Mike stared at the lit-up buttons, then pressed the one to make the lights turn on in Ballora's room. She wasn't on her stage and he already felt nauseous. "I have to shock her again," he muttered into the phone. 

Before Foxy could answer, the system spoke again. "Huh. I guess Ballora has better things to do. Let's _zap_ her. Should be fun."

"...Did that thing jus' sound gleeful at the idea of hurtin' one o' them?"

"Yeah," Mike frowned, looking out into the dim lighting of Ballora's Gallery. Thankfully, she seemed to be back on her stage, dancing slowly. For a moment he wanted to break the glass and get her out, pull her off her stage and keep her safe.

"Let's check on Funtime Foxy. Make sure he's ready for show time tomorrow."

"And the system just misgendered their Foxy," Mike rolled his eyes as he looked away from Ballora. "I haven't seen their Freddy, either, and I'm a little worried about that. He's the face of the restaurant, he should be big and prominent in their posters and stuff. But he's just," he looked around the room. "Not."

"They're mistreatin' their performers, if somethin' happened ta their Freddy, then they prolly jus' put him outta sight."

"Probably. Alright, I think we've reached the point where I need to let you go. Call me back when Michelle is here? I'll need to go let her in."

"Will do, lad. Love you."

"Love you too."

Mike slid his phone into his pocket, breathing deeply for a moment before pressing the lights for Funtime Foxy's Auditorium. Foxy was on stage, he thought, but it was hard to tell with the window fogged as it was. Above his head, the system was making garbled noises, meaningless sounds that made him shiver. In them, he could hear what was probably the word, 'Great' repeated several times, but he couldn't be sure.

"Oh no," he muttered, stepping back from the glass. "Please don't be ghost voices, please don't be ghost voices, I had enough of that when I first started working for these guys."

After a few moments, the system spoke again. "There seems to have been a problem with the voice synthesizer. Default settings have been restored. Please proceed through the vent ahead of you to Circus Baby's Auditorium."

"...Does this have anything to do with the crashing noises I heard the other night?" he asked out loud, looking up like he expected an answer. "Because I heard some seriously suspicious noises on my way out the other night. I'll crawl through this vent, but only because I really want to get this over with. There better not be something waiting to kill me on the other side."

He kneeled down and went through the popped open vent grate. 

 

"Circus Baby had a busy day today! Let's check the light and make sure she's in proper working order. "

"Proper working order my ass," Mike grumbled, tilting back his uniform hat. "We're making sure she hasn't escaped. Are the lights still broken? Because I really do not like the broken lights thing, I don't like it when I can't see stuff."

He nodded when he pressed the lights and the same dim bulb flickered to life right next to the glass. "Hmm, oh, yeah, that's about what I expected. You guys don't take care of anything around here and you don't care about human life, why should I expect you to change a few light bulbs?"

"Oh Circus Baby, we aren't here to play Hide and See. Let's encourage Baby to come out of hiding with a controlled shock."

"If she wants to play, let her play. You try physically forcing the six-hundred pound animatronic to do something she doesn't want to do," Mike groaned as he pressed the button only to receive a halted clicking noise. Jammed. Of course it was. "...Was that what the crashing noise was? She found your shock system and wrecked it. Good for her."

"Let's try another controlled shock."

"It isn't going to work," Mike warned the system uselessly, grinning. True to his words, pressing the button did nothing.

"There seems to be a power malfunction that is affecting our ability to properly motivate Baby. Please standby while I reboot the system. I will be offline momentarily during this process. Various other systems may be offline as well, such as security doors, vent locks, and oxygen. Commencing System Restart."

"...Why are you turning off the oxygen?" Mike's frown returned, deeper at the edges this time. "Not like I need it, but why is it turning off?"

"Motion trigger: Entryway vent."

"Uh,"

"Funtime Auditorium Maintenance Vent opened."

"No."

He could hear the crashing in the vents as something climbed through.

"Ballora Gallery Maintenance Vent opened."

The noise arrived behind him, stopping short. "I don't recognize you. You are new. I remember this...Scenario...However," the voice was soft, a whisper tinged with sadness. "It's a strange thing to want to do...To come here...I'm curious what events would lead a person to want to spend their nights...In a place like this...Willingly..." 

A noise that sounded like a soft gasp followed the words like it was chasing them away.

"Maybe curiosity? Maybe ignorance," if he could have seen the speaker, he would have sworn they were shrugging. "There is a space under the desk. Someone before you crafted it into a hiding place and it worked for him. I recommend that you hurry, though. You will be safe there."

Mike looked around until he spotted it, then carefully climbed under and in, closing the door behind him.

"Just try not to make eye contact. It will be over soon," a scared giggle in the darkness."They will lose interest."

Before Mike could ask who, the voice drifted away, replaced by a much more sinister whisper.

_"Hello in there."_

He shrunk back from the edge, curling his fingers in the holes in the side of the metal door. "Oh god," he hissed out.

_"Someone is inside. Is this the same person?"_

Mike wanted to scream, to tell the being outside his hiding spot to go away. He didn't look around, didn't want to see what his mysterious helper meant by, 'Don't make eye contact'.

_"Knock knock."_

The door started shifting and he threw all of his weight into holding it shut. It still slipped open a little ways and he could have sworn he saw small fingers curling around the edge of it. Little fingers, no bigger than a baby's.

He shuddered.

The door was released from the outside, allowing him to slide it completely shut again. He sat there, still holding onto it and waited. 

He knew better than to assume it was over.

_"We always find a way inside."_

'We' was a troubling word. It implied more than one of whatever baby-sized creature was outside his hiding spot. It implied a group of them, two as a minimum, and he didn't like it.

The door started sliding again, this time faster, as if held by more hands that were pulling at it. 

Mike threw his entire body against the side and pinned it into place, straining against the strength of whatever was trying to get to him. If he could have, he would have been sweating from the exertion. Finally, after a few seconds that seemed like an eternity, the door stopped moving.

_"She's watching us. We have to leave now."_

He also knew better than to ask who.

_"We'll see you again soon!"_

Mike shook his head. "No," he hissed into the now-empty room. "Not ever again."


	4. Night Two -- Beware The Darkness

There was barely any time between the retreat of the whispering animatronics and the return of his guide's voice. 

"When your guide comes back online, he is going to tell you that he was unsuccessful," she seemed to hesitate. "That you must restart the system manually. He will then tell you to crawl through Ballora Gallery as fast as you can to reach the breaker room. If you follow his instructions, you _will_ die. Ballora will not return to her stage anymore. She will catch you. The power will be restored shortly."

Mike frowned as he returned his hat to his head, nodding along. "Alright."

She seemed to hear him, the footsteps moving closer. He stepped back, his thigh hitting the edge of the desk as he waited for her to continue. The guide seemed to notice this as well, a scrabbling noise like someone big and made of metal moving back. "When you crawl through Ballora Gallery, go slowly. She cannot see you and can only listen for your movement. When you hear her music become louder, she is growing near. Listening for you."

"Anything else?"

"Wait," she said after a long moment. "And be still."

Her steps faded away, nothing more said by her as Mike waited. "Alright," he said again, nodding as he moved back towards the vent. Peering inside of it, he waited once more, watching intently. Nothing moved inside of it, she really had left.

Mike slammed his head into the ceiling of the vent when Hand unit spoke again. 

"You will now be required to crawl through Ballora Gallery, using the vent on your left, to reach the breaker room. It is recommended that you stay low to the ground, as fast as possible as to not disturb Ballora."

Rubbing at his scalp, sensors telling him that he should be in pain, Mike scowled. "I'm getting really tired of you, you seem to want me dead."

"I will deactivate myself momentarily, as to not create an auditory disturbance."

"Fuck you."

"Deactivating."

"Ballora Gallery Maintenance Vent opened."

Shaking his head, Mike crawled back through the vent.

The vent into Ballora's gallery was already open when he turned to look at it, and he sighed. "Like I said, you really seem to want me dead. Is the entire building animatronic? Because if that's what's happening, I'm really creeped the hell out here."

He kneeled down to crawl through the second vent, rolling his eyes the entire time.

When he got to the end of the vent, he pulled the flashlight off of his belt, aiming it directly at the ground. Ballora was blind, he remembered as he waited for any sign that she was nearby. She wasn't going to spot the light and come running to kill him. This wasn't the same thing as his first job had been. He'd be alright.

Now he just had to make himself believe it.

Her room was silent as he stepped down into it, his flashlight beam shaking with his movements. Nothing rushed out from the darkness to try and kill him, so he took a step forward. 

Nothing.

Gathering his courage, Mike nodded to himself and crouched down as he continued to move through the room, one hand on the floor to steady himself. After a few more steps, he heard something moving in the darkness around him. His flashlight and the door on the other side of the Auditorium were enough light to see in front of him and little else. 

But there was music.

It was Ballora, it had to be.This was her room, so it had to be her. Unless the animatronics could travel room to room?

Mike frowned as he kept moving, only stopping when music sounded a few feet off to his right in the darkness. The movements sounded shuffled, like someone walking around without picking up their feet. He went entirely still as the music shifted location, like whatever was playing it was moving in circles around him. 

"It seems you are taking a long time. Please proceed as quickly and quietly as possible."

He threw himself forward, his entire body tensed as he huddled on the ground, his arms over his head and his flashlight beam lighting up a spot on the ceiling. The movements continued, the music sounding fainter and further away from him, and Mike wanted to cry out in relief.

The door was so close, close enough that if he just stood up and ran he would make it in moments. 

Mike dismissed the thought even as it occurred to him, getting back onto his hands and knees. He didn't know how fast these animatronics moved, but they were new and improved versions over the ones he had seen moving. They'd been powered by ghosts but there was a limit to what a ghost could change when it came to physical bodies. 

If they'd been that fast thirty years ago, how fast would they be now?

He started moving again, arm over arm, one step at a time until he heard the music circling back towards him. When it moved to his right he froze once more and watched in quiet horror as Ballora twirled in front of him. Her legs seemed to be stuck in one position, her arms held above her head. Ballora's steps were shuffles of her feet, her joints unable to move enough to allow her to pick them up.

Once she had moved past him again, Mike threw himself forward, dropping into a roll. He hit the wall with a soft thud and immediately stopped moving once more.  
Ballora either hadn't noticed or was slower moving than he'd thought.

Waiting for just a moment longer, Mike reached up and turned the door handle, letting himself into the breaker room.

"Motion trigger, Breaker Room."

He shut the door behind him and relaxed, venting out a huge gust of air as he leaned against it. "Alright, Hand Unit, tell me what I'm doing here, you useless jackass," he glared at the ceiling. "Not convinced you're sentient, you're too happy about them getting hurt."

Mike looked around the room. "Or me getting killed."

"You may now interface with the breaker control box," came the response as the voice rebooted itself. "Using the interface may disrupt nearby electronics. If you feel you are in danger, feel free to disconnect the interface temporarily until it is safe to reconnect."

"That sounds familiar..." Mike groaned as he walked over to the tablet he could see wired into the mess of the control board. "Something about systems shutting down randomly, you guys ignoring the growing rights of sentience in animatronic bodies...I swear, no one involved with the creation of these places even stops to think about how sentient beings will react to being trapped."

Off to one side, he could see what looked to be Funtime Freddy.

This version of Freddy appeared to be wearing a hand puppet, his pastel colored eyes somewhat muted in the shadows he stood in. The puppet on his hand was shaped like Bon, the version of Bonnie from one of the other restaurants. Mike watched the two of them for a moment, frowning even more as he did so. Bon had been part of Irasa's group, the secondary versions of all of them that had been the 'Party' variations. 

The group that had given them Reyna and Irasa, as well as Frederick and Bon.

The Mangle, Partytime Chica, Partytime Freddy, Partytime Bonnie.

How insulting was it that, thirty years later, they were still trying to create versions of them that were nothing more than robots standing on a stage?

As if transferring data and programming and trying to delete sentience would yield any different results besides angry people made of metal? They weren't human, but they were definitely people. Mike took the tablet in his hands, booting it up carefully and waiting for the device to connect fully. 

Across the room from him, a laugh echoed and grated at his hearing.

"Well, hello again!"

Funtime Freddy was moving.

Shit.

Mike dropped to the ground behind the control stand, tablet still in his hands as he waited, his eyes wide. Funtime Freddy was twitching, his head jerking at random intervals to one side as he stuttered over wordless noises. The systems indicator was up and running and Mike held down the button to reboot one of them.

It reminded him of nothing so much as being in the main office while Orsani stalked around outside. Part of him wanted to throw the tablet like he had then, see if the same sort of thing happened.

He missed Diana.

The little ghost girl had been a helpful, if somewhat terrifying, person to be around. Child murdered by a possessed man whose possessor had been possessed by the ghosts of the owner's kids. He didn't think he'd ever get over how entirely fucked up the situation had been.

He missed Harvey and Jeremy, even. 

Harvey had been a bit of a pain in his ass sometimes, random messages meant to clue him in when he didn't even know what he was looking for, but he'd been a decent guy. Scared and unsure of himself and ready to die for his own stupidity and nostalgia, but a decent guy.

Jeremy was someone he'd only ever known as a ghost but he'd liked him once he stopped being possessed even in death.

"C'mon Bon, say 'Hi' to our friend!"

Mike looked up as he tapped another button. Funtime Freddy didn't seem to be able to see him once he'd ducked out of sight. He could hear the bear's footsteps across the room, sometimes right next to him, but he wasn't finding Mike. It was like the moment Mike had dropped out of sight his awareness of location was gone.

What were they doing to these guys?

Another thing, Mike thought as he curled lower and continued working, was how many times Funtime Freddy seemed to be trying to catch the attention of his version of Bonnie. From what he had seen, there wasn't another animatronic in the room. If there'd been another version of Bonnie standing next to them, then maybe Mike could have brushed it off. 

But the room was empty except for the two of them.

More ghosts.

A missing animatronic and one that seemed dumbed down. What had been done to these ones?

The tablet beeped at him and he tried that system restart again. Funtime Freddy continued to roam around the room except for the small corner that Mike had tucked himself into.

"I know you're over there somewhere!"

Mike paused, his finger still on the tablet as he waited for a sign of any other awareness. When it didn't come he shook his head and glanced at Funtime Freddy. The bear had his back to Mike, one hand permanently wrapped around a microphone and the other stuffed into the hand puppet he wore.

It was funny, though, puppet Bonnie's arms weren't big enough to be Funtime Freddy's fingers.

Another beep, another failed restart.

Shuffling footsteps made him look up, meeting Funtime Freddy's eyes. Mike froze in his spot, the tablet chiming happily.

"Bon-Bon! I th-think that's the birthday boy over there! We should go give them a surprise!"

The systems were rebooted.

Funtime Freddy moved back, another voice glitch making his words unintelligible as he turned to look through the wires again.

Mike sighed in relief and got up slowly to exit the room, watching Funtime Freddy as he opened the door. The bear was still rooting around the room behind him, his voice echoing strangely in the small space. 

Ballora's Gallery was still dark as Mike stepped back into it and closed the door. The moment his foot touched the tiles of her room's floor, he heard her voice. She sounded angry, scared, and lonely all at once. Her voice was gentle despite the volume of it and he immediately wanted to start running once he heard the words.

_"Why do you hide inside your walls,_

_When there is music in my halls?_

_All I see is an empty room,_

_No more joy,_

_An empty tomb._

_It's so good to sing all day,_

_To dance, to spin, to fly away..."_

She paused, her tune dying off as he heard her moving. The music box he'd heard earlier had started playing again like it was the music to go with her song. Her voice sounded again and he shivered. "Is someone there? Is it time for the show?" 

He crept along the floor quietly, his flashlight clacking against the tiles every time he forgot to lift it out of the way.

"I can hear someone, creeping through my room." 

Her feet moved her in dancing spirals across the floor barely two arms lengths away from him. Mike stopped breathing, stopped moving, let his hands go flat on the floor and around the flashlight handle.

"Perhaps not...

Mike nodded, almost agreeing with her out loud as he looked towards where he'd left the entrance vent open. If he could just reach it, he could hide in it and explain to her from the sheltered safety of it.

"I don't want to dance," Ballora's voice echoed through her gallery again. "Anymore."

Mike swallowed nervously as he held still, his entire body locked in place as he stared at the circle of light on the ground in front of him. He could hear her circling around him, her steps soft and measured as she danced. The door back to the main maintenance room was less than thirty feet away and he remembered the feeling of imminent death and possible dismemberment. He nearly cursed out loud as he realized why it felt so familiar.

It was like no time had passed at all, and he was back to swinging an ax at a wall while hoping the angry ghost children wouldn't use those he had befriended to kill him.

Her music box chimed softly in the background, a haunting tune that pulled at something deep inside of him. He could feel the whirring of the mechanics Michelle had put into his chest to keep him moving, each joint held so perfectly still that he could have been a lifeless doll curled up on the floor. Ballora's steps, perfect circles, brought her in front of him. "Wait," he managed to say.

She stopped.

Her foot was poised to spin again, her arms held above her head, her skin shining a soft blue in the dim reflection of the flashlight. "Where are you?" she almost sang the words, her body locking into the same state of stillness as his own. "I know you're in here."

"I'm down here," Mike closed his eyes and nodded before sitting up slowly, pushing his weight off his hands as he sat back and settled into a kneeling position. "My name is Mike Schmidt, I'm actually here to help you," he wasn't shaking as he lifted the flashlight, but he felt like he should have been. If he'd still been flesh and blood, he would have been. "You're Ballora, right?"

"No one ever helps us," her voice held an edge of anger to it, her knees bending to lower her almost to his eye level. "Why would you be a difference?"

"Because I-" he leaned back from her searching hand. If she grabbed him before he could explain, she might kill him. If she killed him before he could explain, they'd all be stuck here forever. "I used to be human. I'm...I'm not anymore. Something happened when I was a kid, something bad. I got hurt," he took what amounted to a deep breath these days. "And a little ghost girl shoved me back inside my body. When I got older, my body broke down. A friend of mine made me a new one, made it out of wires and metal and carved something into the arm to keep me inside of it."

"You are metal."

He could hear her suspicion, her anger still bubbling to the surface as she seemed to be going over his words. "Almost entirely. An-and that friend of mine, she wants to make you a new body too."

"A new body?"

"You wouldn't have to dance anymore," he added in quietly after a moment of silence. "Not unless you wanted to."

Ballora was silent.

Her arms lowered from their position above her head as her knees bent further. She ended up in a position similar to Mike's, both of them on the floor. Her joints were too stiff to lower her completely, but she could kneel. If her eyes opened, she'd be able to see him where he sat less than three feet from her. Whoever had made the body her sentience had been shoved inside of had made it obvious that she was an animatronic. Her fingers were thick and round, her legs bisected two different ways by the open seams of round-edged metal.

"You want to help me?"

"I want to help all of you," he nodded. "The Funtime crew, you, Baby-"

"Do not help Baby," she urged over his words, her tone shifting again. "Baby doesn't need help."

Mike paused, then frowned. "Why shouldn't I help Baby?"

"There is something inside of her," Ballora's voice wavered for a second. "Something that made her go wrong. She was never...Good."

For a moment, all he could think of was the whispered advice, the heart-stopping moments of terror when he hid under a desk and pulled a curve of metal around to protect himself. "Is she watching us right now?" he asked in a whisper. "Does she watch all of you, is that why you...No, the stages mean danger and fear. You don't like them, you don't like performing."

"We did," her voice was barely a whisper. "Once."

The way she spoke reminded him of Diana. The way the little ghost girl had been when she'd been about to lose track of time, her face pressed to the door she'd died against. Her voice had always gone wispy around the edges, trailing off sentences and dropping words, as if it took all of her concentration to continue speaking. 

"Baby doesn't watch us," Ballora continued. "But she does."

Mike shifted and nearly screamed when one of Ballora's hands wrapped around his wrist. 

"You are made of metal," she announced, mystified. "You feel like one of us. Where do you come from?"

"I started working for Fazbear entertainment when I was twenty-two," Mike began slowly, letting her hold onto his wrist. Her fingers weren't able to close around it entirely, the shape of her hand preventing anything other than a loose hold. "I was human. Sort of. I was a ghost possessing my own body. Do you know about ghosts?"

"There are some...Here. Voices," she seemed to be looking for the right words. "There used to be more of us. We had some of the oldest here, had another Funtime crew member. She was...Lost."

"What do you mean by 'Lost'? Do you mean she broke down?"

"They took her away when she stopped singing. She still could, but she did not want to. She planned parties and she sang. She," Ballora tilted her head, her eyes still closed. "She stopped because she was sad."

"Who was she?"

"They called her Chica."

Funtime Chica. If he remembered correctly, there'd been something about her in the files that Foxy had given him. "There's a Chica for every generation of animatronics, just like there's a Foxy and a Freddy and a Bonnie."

"Is there more?"

"There's a lot more," Mike nodded and took her hand in both of his own. "My friend, the one I mentioned? She made bodies for all of them, got them out of their old ones. Both Foxys, Bonnies, Freddys, and Chicas. New bodies for them, new bodies for Foxy's crew. There's so many out there. There's an entire group of us, of people like me. New bodies for sentience so that the old ones aren't needed. Michelle is good at what she does, she makes it so we can feel things and taste things and I-" he stopped, realizing he was shaking. "I think you'll like being free."

"Would I be able to see? They took my eyes once, I did not want to dance, so they took my eyes."

"If you wanted eyes, you'd have eyes. Michelle listens to people," he put his hands on her cheeks, felt the shift of the plates that made up her face. "Michelle lets you help choose the design of your new body. She won't let you be stuck in something you don't like."

"I would like to see," Ballora seemed to smile for a moment, her lips mostly immobile. "I forgot what colors look like, I think."

Mike nodded. "I'll help you get out of here and then we'll get you into a new body and you'll be able to see. I just need to survive, and I think I need to go have a talk like this with Foxy. She's been abandoned in her auditorium, forced to perform. The electric shocks really aren't good for you guys."

"They hurt."

"I know," Mike winced. "And I'm sorry I ever had to shock you. The system won't let me do anything else, won't even open the vents until you guys are on stage."

"I will go willingly," Ballora promised quietly. "If you help me, I will go onto stage willingly. If it will get me out of here, I will dance until I am free."

A noise sounded behind Mike and he went stiff, turning slowly. "I think I have to go now," he said quietly. The door to the maintenance room had opened, revealing Funtime Freddy. Bonnie was on his wrist, little arms waving in a way that reminded him of the marionette. "Freddy's in the room," he whispered to her, moving slowly. 

"You must leave now," she said softly. "Or he will keep you here."

"He's in maintenance for a reason, got it," Mike nodded as he stepped around Ballora. "I will get you all out of here. Try to tell him what's happening?"

"I will."

"Thanks, gotta go bye!" he nearly shrieked as Freddy started running towards him, his own feet tripping slightly as he sped for the vent and dove into it just in time. Freddy slammed against the wall, a screech of mechanics as he twisted to move away. 

"It's t-t-t-t-time for fun!" he stuttered as he walked away. 

Mike let himself lay down in the vent for a moment, eyes wide as he stared up at the ceiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I just wanted to clarify something: Androids and sentient machines are having a revolution for their rights in this 'Verse. Yay for Scifi!


	5. Night Two -- Bury Your Pain

The main room was quiet when Mike returned to it. 

Nothing was out of place, nothing had changed, but it still felt different. Like maybe he'd gone tumbling through an alternate universe and come out the other side...Altered. Or maybe he'd landed in the wrong world entirely, something like home but not quite the same. 

Mike shook his head and leaned against the control panel. 

Ballora needed to be the first out. Funtime Freddy still had some issues, Bonnie and Chica needed to be found, Funtime Foxy was unknown. No records of assaults on employees but that could have been due to poor record keeping.

He wasn't about to chance it.

His phone rang and he jerked sideways, his butt sliding along the counter edge until he overbalanced. He landed on the floor, limbs splayed, and groaned as he reached for his earpiece, putting it in and hitting the answer button. "Hello?"

"Mike?"

"Oh," Mike sat up slowly. "Hey, Michelle. I thought Foxy was going to call me."

"He was going to until I told him I wanted to. Mike, I need to know," she paused, seemed to struggle to find her words. "How bad is the damage?"

"...Some of it's pretty bad. Ballora can't see and her limbs are wired weird, they wanted to keep her range of motion limited. Freddy's gone a little off, I think because they took his Bonnie away. Don't know about Funtime Foxy yet but she's probably a little wonky too. Michelle," he hesitated. "Are you alright?"

"I just found Dota, I had to detour to drop her off with Irasa and Reyna. Her head took a few hits, I think because of some people trying to make an anti-android point. Mike, she didn't remember anything. She wasn't wearing Diana's necklace, she forgot her own name..." she half-sobbed into the phone, Brianna's voice quietly whispering to her, calming her down. "There's a haunted house themed around the nightmares we lived through, Mike."

"Jesus fuck..."

"And that's-" she laughed hysterically. "That's not the worst part. Mike, the people running it think it's all a big joke, they've managed to get ahold of s-some of the parts of their old bodies and turn it into some hokey sideshow!"

"Shit, Michelle, that's horrible," Mike slid a hand down his face, fingers digging in. "Are you here?"

"Yeah, we just got here. We've got a temporary body, a female one."

Mike nodded, grabbing his keys and heading for the elevator. "I'll be up in just a few minutes. Did you drive here?"

"No, Bri didn't think I was in any state to drive."

"She's probably right."

"Yeah, I know," Michelle wailed as he rode the elevator up to the ground floor. As long as he didn't clock out he could still come back down. His keycard was in his pocket, he patted it to make sure. "But I just..."

"I know," Mike echoed her words back to her, practically running out of the building when the elevator arrived on the right floor. "I'll be there in about fifteen seconds, alright?"

"'Kay," she sniffed.

He hung up and ran.

 

The sky was still dark, the clock on his phone telling him that most sane people were still asleep right now.

Michelle's Jeep was nowhere to be seen.

"...Michelle?" Mike called out. "You here?"

"We're over here," Brianna called back. She stood with her back pressed against a large truck with a trailer attached to the back. Her arms were wrapped around her wife and she looked angry. "We stopped to get a few more things, Michelle wanted to do some other stuff after she found Dota how she was."

"A 'Few'?" Mike's eyebrows shot up. "You're calling this, 'A Few'?"

"Bite me," Brianna snapped the words out. 

Mike held up his hands in surrender, walking close enough to put a gentle hand on Michelle's shoulder. She was older now than the last time they'd seen each other in person but it was good to see her. Her hair was a shock of silver that draped over one shoulder, all signs of her once-premature gray gone. "Sorry," he said softly.

Brianna's face relaxed as she sighed. "No, it's fine, I'm just being...You know me. I think I'm just stressed out."

"Is Dota alright?"

"We managed to convince her we weren't trying to kill her," Brianna shrugged. "Got her to Irasa and Reyna without much of a problem, made sure she was going to stay there. She doesn't remember anything, Mike. Michelle checked her black box memory really quickly and it looked like someone dug through it."

"Shit," Mike groaned. "Not a good thing."

"We've-" Michelle straightened up, wiping hurriedly at her face. "We've got more than one shell for them, got enough to get all of them. Just need help dragging them inside."

"One at a time, not much room. Fazbear Entertainment hasn't gotten any better about designing buildings for their employees to survive in. Which," Mike scowled as he followed Brianna and Michelle to the back of the truck. "We already knew that."

"Of course they're awful about it," Brianna scoffed as she unlocked the trailer and pulled the first shell body out, handing it off to Mike. "One at a time?"

"We have to crawl through vents to get in and out."

"Damn, that sucks," Brianna looked at one of her hands. "I just got my nails done. Think I can bill them for my manicure?"

"Maybe," Mike laughed. "Probably nothing comes out of it."

She pulled her still bright red hair over one shoulder and tied it into a quick braid, wrapping the end with fast, precise movements. "Well," she cracked her neck as she grabbed Michelle's tool box, grinning at her wife. "Time to go and rescue some more people from the worst business on the planet," she handed Michelle the second laptop bag she was reaching for. 

"To victory and beyond," Mike muttered as he closed the trailer, hefting the shell into his arms. 

 

"Shit, you weren't kidding about the vents!" Michelle tumbled out of the end of one of them, her tools and laptops already safely inside the room. 

"No, I wasn't," Mike helped her up. "And to get to Ballora, we need to go through a longer one. They're designed to trap these guys inside, their bodies are too big as-is to go through them. I think we may have made an example, and I think that they're angry at us for being that example."

"We started android civil rights," Michelle grinned viciously. "I'd like to see them come after us."

"Trust me, she's not kidding," Brianna swept past them, looking into both rooms, the light buttons flickering beneath her hands. "She's been practicing using a baseball bat to hit heavy things around, says it's therapy for free," she laughed as she turned on her heel and pressed a kiss to the tip of her wife's nose. "I love you."

"Love you too," Michelle's face pinked. "Keep an eye on us?"

"As if I would do anything besides make sure you're safe," Brianna scoffed. "I've been married to you how long now? In this for the long haul."

Mike kneeled down next to the vent and curled himself inside, pulling the shell after him. "Alright, we have stuff we need to do," he mock-scolded them. "Kissy faces later, helping trapped people now."

Brianna waved jauntily, helping Michelle push things into the vent before helping the woman herself into it. "Don't die you two, we've dealt with that enough."

"Yeah yeah," Mike called over his shoulder. 

"I am not joking, Schmidt!" she called back. "Already had to bury your moldering corpse, don't want to have to say goodbye to the ghost it was hosting! Too fond of him, even if we do yell at each other sometimes."

The moving was slow going, every few feet meaning a rearranging of the various things they were bringing with them. 

At the end of the vent, Mike stopped and looked out into the room. "Ballora?" he called out. "It's okay to come off the stage now. I brought someone here to see you," he paused. "And an option for you to decide on."

"Did I miss an entire day?" 

Ballora's voice echoed around the room and Michelle's eyes went wide.

"No," Mike reassured her, dropping out of the vent and onto the ground, the shell in his arms. "If you don't want to move, we can come to you. Where are you?"

"I'm on the ground in front of the stage," she answered slowly like she was unsure. 

He headed off in her direction, lifting the shell back into his arms. "This isn't a body designed for you," he started, smiling when he saw her standing on her own. "It's just a temporary one. Remember that friend I mentioned?"

"The helpful one."

"Her name is Michelle," Mike set the shell onto the floor and stood back up. "I didn't mention it earlier, but I was planning on bringing her here tonight, even before we talked. I want all of you guys safe, so I arranged to bring her in and help get you out."

"I-" Ballora's entire frame twitched. "You told the truth."

Mike nodded. "Yeah, I do that."

"No one tells the truth. No one helps us."

"Only things we need from you are for you to allow us to hook you up and switch you into the shell body we have for you, and for you to tell us what you know about the ones who went missing," Mike put a hand on her shoulder. "Ballora, we just want you safe."

"I can help you," Ballora's voice was earnest. If she could cry, Mike suspected she would have right then. 

"Good," Michelle smiled at her, her bags on her shoulders and her work boots scuffing the floor. "My name is Michelle and I want you safe and happy. Are there any others in the room right now?"

"Funtime Freddy," Ballora answered. "He is close to being taken to the Scooping Room."

"...The Scooping Room?" Mike and Michelle traded a look of horror. 

"It is where they take us when we do not behave. They take us there and pull us from our bodies and they-" she shuddered, her vocalizer crackling. "I do not like the Scooping Room. There are many bad memories there and they never manage to remove the sadness."

She pressed one of her hands to her chest, the joints creaking as she did. 

"They put the sadness there in the first place," Michelle grumbled, setting her stuff on the floor. "I'm going to ask you to lie down so that I can do this, alright? I'll help you get in the right position."

"Will I need to be Scooped?"

"No," Michelle's voice was hard for a moment. "No, you will not be Scooped, not ever again. I'm guessing it means something horrible. I won't stand for anyone being treated so miserably."

"They pull out our insides and they pull on our wires and they hurt us," Ballora's voice was wispy again.

Michelle took both of Ballora's hands in her own. "Not ever again," she repeated. "I helped Reyna and I helped Irasa, I brought Felix back from almost shutting down forever and taking Isaac's happiness with him, I'm going to help you too. Alright? This is here and now, I promise that I will never let anything so bad happen to you ever again. Not while I'm alive and breathing."

Ballora nodded, her body shaking as she struggled to kneel. 

"Before I even transfer you over," Michelle stopped her. "I'm going to take the joint restrictors off."

She grabbed her box of tools and dug through it, inspecting Ballora's knees carefully. "You'll feel so much better," she whispered in a soothing tone of voice. "We'll get you all fixed up and safe and away from here and everything will be better. Your friends will be safe, you'll be safe, no one will ever be hurt again."

Michelle worked quickly, her deft fingers untwisting and removing the added-on mechanics. 

"Stupid assholes who don't know what they're doing," she muttered under her breath. "Basically tying a living woman's legs together, that's what this is."

With every bolt she removed, Ballora's entire body seemed to loosen up until she could easily bend down to offer Michelle her arms. They went through the same treatment, careful fingers tugging at crudely added metal. 

"Thank you," Ballora whispered.

"No problem," Michelle took her face in both hands. "Let's see...Here we go!"

She tapped at the side of Ballora's head, a small panel that wasn't visible unless you were looking. "This is where your chip should be. New models, new bodies, new tech, chips instead of sentience transfer." Michelle giggled as she popped open the panel on the shell body. "Are you ready, Ballora?"

"Oh, yes," Ballora sounded nervous but her hands were clasped together in front of her, steadier than her voice. "Yes."

"Here we go," Michelle popped open Ballora's chip panel, the small device falling into her hand and she smiled. "New body for you, Ballora. New legs, new hair, eyes, hands, everything..."

She pressed the chip into the shell body and closed everything back up. 

It took a moment, the entire body twitching, but Mike could practically see the moment Ballora woke herself up. Her body went stiff, her hands flexing and then relaxing, and her eyes opened slowly. She winced, curling into a ball with her hands flying to cover them and pressed her face into the floor for good measure. 

Michelle ran a soothing hand over her back, waiting until she uncovered her eyes a little. "You haven't been able to see for a while, so it'll be a rough adjustment," she warned. "Just be careful."

Ballora's head twitched minutely in acknowledgment, her fingers going looser in her hair with every second that passed until they were merely resting on top of her head. "The walls are blue," she said softly, a sense of wonder in her voice. "Like I used to be. Is this my body?" she moved one hand in front of her face, curling the fingers slowly, one-two-three-four, four-three-two-one, each finger tapping against her palm. She sat up slowly as well, moving like she was in a dream and she couldn't quite believe it.

"It's not your permanent one," Michelle smiled at her. "I'll design one for you, specifically yours, and I'll make it for you too. This one is just so we can get you out of here."

"I can leave?"

Michelle took a shuddering breath and looked like she wanted to cry. "Yes, you can leave. We're getting all of you out."

Mike kneeled down next to Ballora, a smile already on his face. "Hey again."

"Metal. Mike. Your name is Mike," Ballora looked at his face, her mouth twitching like it wanted to smile but she didn't know how. "Your words were truth, you didn't lie to me."

"I kind of don't like liars," Mike shrugged and let her take one of his hands in both of her own. 

"Your skin is warm," she announced as she pressed her fingers into his palm, traced the back of his hand. Ballora grabbed one of Michelle's hands as well, comparing the two. "Not as soft as hers, you're made of metal inside, like me," she met Mike's eyes and blinked, once and then again, then one eye at a time. "I can feel everything."

"Michelle is good at what she does," he grinned as he said it, looking towards the mechanic. "Sensors, sensory nodes, wiring to make everything feel real...The skin is something her dad created, made to feel like human skin. Something about silicone and latex and I don't actually remember that lecture in full."

Ballora's eyes were wide as she looked around the room again. "We can leave now? I do not want to stay here any longer."

"We can leave," Michelle gestured to her old body. "Do you want to try and take that with us?"

"No," Ballora shook her head, inching away from her old body and glaring at it. "I want it to stay here. I do not want anything to do with it ever again."

Mike stood up and grabbed it around the middle, dragging it back towards the stage. "If I don't," he explained when Michelle raised an eyebrow. "The system freezes until their weight is on the stage."

"Funtime Freddy is in the service rooms," Ballora said quietly. "The stages can be reset so that their weight is not needed anymore," she accepted Michelle's offered hand, letting herself be pulled to her feet. She stumbled for a moment and then steadied herself. "Can we help him, too?"

"That's why I'm here," Michelle laughed, nodding. "I'm here to make sure that every last one of you-"

"Not every one of us," came the interruption from Ballora. "Baby does not need to leave this place. Baby will not leave this place. Baby does not exist."

Michelle blinked, then looked at Mike. "What do you mean?"

"Circus Baby was once our star," Ballora began slowly, seeming to search for the right words. "She laughed and she sang and she played. A day came when her wiring changed, something not right with her, deep inside where she was. They took her to the repair room, brought her back as quickly as they could. When they did, she was...Broken. She laughed and she sang and she played and she screamed in the night. Her voice echoed through the halls and she screamed until they took her away again. When she came back, she did not scream anymore. She laughed less and she sang less and she played more, her games turned strange.

"We used to talk," Ballora looked at her hands, still flexing her fingers. "Baby and I, we used to play together, perform for the children together. She was my...I suppose little sister would be a good term for her. I sang her to sleep, even though I thought of my voice as lesser quality than hers," she frowned, her entire mood shifting into something somehow sadder than a scared voice in the darkness that had given up all hope. "After she came back, she did not perform with me anymore. She did not sing with me anymore."

Mike frowned as well. "What changed?"

"I do not know," Ballora shook her head and curled in on herself. "And then the little girl went missing. None of the employees could find her, the security people could not find her, she was just...Gone. There one moment and missing the next."

"Why the hell does it always come back to missing children?" Mike grumbled, his hands pressing into his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a much easier process to move them from body to body this time. Michelle is happy.


	6. Night Three -- Bring Out Your Fear

"Alright," Michelle looked up at the speakers with wide eyes. "You weren't kidding about this place not being in good shape. That touch screen was flickering so badly I could barely read any of the letters."

"Yeah," Mike nodded. "You kind of just...Click randomly and hope for the best."

The elevator, still playing some sort of bongo music, came to a stop and opened to let the three of them into the main part of the building. Mike exited first and headed for the vent, pausing when Brianna didn't follow. "Everything alright?"

"I- Yeah, I just thought I saw something," she frowned as she headed to the vent as well, her sharp eyes focused on a grate. 

Michelle frowned as well, following her wife into the vent and sighed. "This is so not how you design a building," she grumbled as she went. "Make vents so they can't escape, fuck you. Make vents the only way for your employees to move around? Get fucked you stupid assholes."

Mike laughed. "We've been dealing with these guys since we were in our twenties, we know how it goes by now."

"You're still in your twenties," Michelle said quietly. "Not much has changed for you."

His smile dropped and he went quiet. "Everything has changed," he whispered as Brianna dropped out of the end of the vent. Michelle followed and he sat there for a moment. "Everything in my entire life has changed."

"Mike?" Michelle offered him a hand. "I didn't mean-"

"I know," he smiled at her. 

The speakers above them crackled to life, all three of them jumping nearly out of their skins. "Due to unforeseen malfunctions from today's shows, your nightly duties will require you to perform maintenance that you may or may not be skilled enough to perform. It became necessary for technicians to attempt to disconnect Funtime Freddy's power module."

"Disconnect-" Michelle's face twisted in disgusted horror. "That's like ripping out someone's brain!"

"However, they were unsuccessful."

"No, really?" Mike rolled his eyes and set his bag down. "Who would have guessed."

"Allowing them to try again would be an inefficient path forward, as we would need to allow six to eight weeks for recovery and physical therapy," a brief pause before the system seemed to catch up to itself. "You will need to reach the Parts and Service Room on the other side of Funtime Auditorium to perform the procedure yourself."

"Inefficient," Brianna scoffed and inspected her nails. "Code for, 'We know our techs will die, so we're sending you in instead'," she rolled her eyes as well. "I hate this place."

"Let's check on Ballora first and make sure she's on her stage."

Mike sighed. "Thank god we got her out of here," he muttered as he turned on the lights. When the lights of Ballora's Auditorium flickered to life, he shrieked and threw himself backward, his scream covering the sound of the system speaking again. "Jesus fucking- What the hell?!"

With wide eyes and a pounding heart, Brianna slammed her hand down on the light button, her jaw dropping when she saw it as well. "That's..."

On the stage, each of them holding a limb or a piece of Ballora, Ballora's secondary animatronics were dancing in place as usual. Their carved faces stared vacantly at the wall in front of them. Michelle helped Mike back to his feet and watched them. "I...Do we need to rescue them?"

"I don't know," Mike answered after a moment of horrified staring. "Ballora didn't mention anything about them being sentient, but if they were, she might not know? They're holding pieces of her old body..."

"I'm suddenly really glad we got her out of there yesterday," Brianna whispered. "This doesn't seem good."

Mike turned to the light for Funtime Foxy's Auditorium and pressed it. There was nothing on stage and he braced himself for having to press the button to shock her. "Great, it looks like everything is as it should be in Funtime Auditorium."

"Bullshit," Brianna stared at the now dark room. "BULLSHIT!"

"I need to go in there," Mike looked too, taking a deep breath. "I need to talk to her and get her out too."

"There is no need to check on Baby tonight. Please refrain from entering unauthorized areas. Proceed directly to Funtime Auditorium."

The three of them stared as two different vents opened, the one for Funtime Auditorium and the one for Baby's room. Mike glanced between the two and frowned, kneeling down to look into Baby's vent. "Curiouser and curiouser," he muttered. "One of us should go in there and see what's happening. It probably should be me considering that I'm made of metal."

"Mike," Michelle shook her head. "I should go. Funtime Foxy will likely try and succeed in killing me if I go in her room. Baby's room doesn't have a vent to go into her room and I might be able to fix the lights in there."

Brianna grabbed her wife's hand. "'Chelle," she whispered, her eyes wide. "We don't know what Baby is like other than what Ballora said about her," she shook her head when Michelle tried to speak. "And Ballora doesn't like her. What if Baby is just straight up a murderer? The ones we've met so far haven't been, but maybe we've been really lucky in that aspect of things."

"Bri," Michelle smiled nervously as she looked into the vent. "We need to check it out."

"Then I'm going with you!"

Michelle put both of her hands on Brianna's cheeks and shook her head again. "We need someone to watch. I've dealt with these guys for decades now, ever since I was seventeen. I know how to deal with them and Baby's room doesn't have a vent to go through into her territory. Mike needs someone to watch his back, he has to deal with Funtime Foxy and Funtime Freddy," smiling reassuringly, she shrugged. "And the Foxys have always been the fastest of the animatronics. If he messes up, you need to be there to guide him out."

"I don't want you to die," Brianna pressed their foreheads together and sighed. "I need you to not die."

Before Michelle could say anything else, she kissed her, their lips sliding together in a familiar way born from two decades of being together. When they pulled apart and breathed together for a moment, Michelle nodded. "I love you," she whispered the words into the air they shared. 

"I love you too," Brianna nudged their noses together. "Don't die, you're not allowed to die here."

"Got it," Michelle laughed when she turned to look at Mike. 

He was facing the wall, his hands clasped behind his back, and she covered her mouth as more laughter came spilling out of her. "Mike, you can turn around now."

"It seemed like a private moment," he explained when he had. "I didn't need to see it."

"Ready to face possible death?"

"...Is there any other way of dealing with this place?" Mike raised an eyebrow and headed for the vent into Funtime Auditorium. "You get Baby's, I get Funtimes. Good luck, my friend!" he waved a salute in the air as he crouched down and started in. 

Michelle did the same, one last glance at her wife telling her that the worry was still there.

~

Baby's Auditorium was still dark when Michelle looked through the window.

She breathed a sigh of relief and tried to ignore the feeling of being watched. "You know better by now," she looked into the darkness again, frowning. "If you're feeling watched, it's never from the place you think it is."

A noise echoed from behind her and she froze.

When it sounded again, she practically threw herself under the desk, her suddenly sweating hands clutching so tightly to the metal that it was going to leave welts across her palms. "Oh fuck, why didn't I bring my radio?" she whispered in the small space beneath the desk. "Thank god for Mike telling me about this..."

"Did you know that I was on stage once?" came a voice that seemed almost too inhuman. 

It sounded like a ghost.

"It wasn't for very long, only one day...What a wonderful day, though. I was in a small room with balloons and a few tables. No one sat at the tables, though, but children would run in and out. Some were afraid of me. Others enjoyed my songs. Music was _always_ coming from somewhere else. Down a hall."

Michelle held the makeshift door tighter, her hands shaking as she pressed her lips together. Mentally, she strangled the noises that wanted to escape, the small, scared whimpers of terror. Whatever was out there, she didn't want it to find her.

Ballora's words of warning came back to her right then.

Baby.

It had to be.

"I would always count the children. I'm not sure why."

Oh god.

Shaking her head, Michelle nearly sobbed, one hand moving from the door to cover her mouth. Block the screams in, she thought, half-hysterical and ready to run. Mike had never warned her how terrifying it was to be trapped and have to listen to something that might have wanted to kill you.

"I was always acutely aware of how many there were in the room with me. Two, then three, then two, then three, then four, then two. Then none. They usually played together in groups of two or three."

It seemed to be moving closer to her, considering the room.

"I was covered in _glitter_. I smelled like birthday cake," a pause, a dragging footstep that she recognized as an endoskeleton moving across a carpeted floor. There wasn't any possibility of her mistaking that noise, she'd helped Fredbear and Bonnefeld get new bodies and their old ones had been in her house. "There were two, then three, then five, then four."

Michelle barely dared to breathe.

"I can do something special," another pause, a step towards the desk. "Did you know that? I can make ice cream. Although I only did it once..."

Metal fingers tapped on the desk above her head. "There were four, then three, then two..."

She wanted to scream. Burst out from under the desk and run screaming to her wife and their friend and never look back at this place ever again.

"Then One. Something happened when there was one. A little girl, standing by herself. I was no longer..." it seemed to consider for a moment. "Myself. And I stopped singing. My stomach opened, and there was ice cream."

Michelle's eyes opened as wide as they could, her feet bracing against the metal as well. 

"I couldn't move, at least, not until she stepped closer. There was screaming for a moment, but only for a moment. Then other children rushed in again, but they couldn't hear her over the sounds of their own excitement."

The missing girl.

Ballora had mentioned her, how the staff couldn't find her. She'd been inside of Baby all that time, however long ago that had been. Mike was right, it always came back to missing kids and small corpses shoved inside of animatronics.

"I still hear her sometimes."

One final tap of metal fingers against the desk made Michelle startle slightly. 

"Why did that happen?"

She waited until she heard the footsteps shuffle away, breathing slowly and evenly as she waited for her heart to stop hammering in her chest. After a few minutes, Michelle opened the makeshift door and sped across the room on her hands and knees, throwing herself into the vent and scrambling down it towards her wife.

~

"Okay, Mike?" Brianna's voice echoed over the speakers as he crawled from the end of the vent into Funtime Foxy's room. "She's still not on the stage."

Mike froze in place, glancing up at the ceiling. There wasn't a way for him to respond, especially not when Funtime Foxy knew how to find him by sight and sound. She'd track him in the darkness quickly. He looked back at the vent and slid back into it quickly, perching himself near the lip. "Foxy?" he called into the darkness.

There wasn't an answer. 

"Funtime Foxy," he tried again, waiting for a second before continuing. He could feel her listening to him. "My name is Mike Schmidt. I've been working here the last couple of nights."

He could hear the footsteps on the floor, the linoleum tiles echoing the sound through the room.

"I wanted to help you, it's why I got a job here in the first place. You guys are being abused and no one should be electrocuted into compliance, it's not right. I want to help you," he paused as the steps came closer, scooting further back into the vent. "I have a couple of friends here with me, we've got Ballora into a new body so she can leave with us. We have a body for you, too, if you want to leave. I can't imagine you wanting to stay," he paused again, hearing her steps come to a stop. Mike pulled the flashlight off of his belt and switched it on, holding the light end in his palm to stop it from shining into the room. "I explained it to Ballora and we got her out. I'm going to explain it to Freddy and get him out.

"I need to explain it to you and get you out," he licked his lips, an unnecessary reflexive movement as he waited. Carefully, he lifted the flashlight beam from his palm and shone it into the room. 

She was standing closer than he realized, her pastel colored hands raised slightly like she was going to grab for him. "Funtime Foxy, we've got a whole crew for you to meet."

Her jaw twitched.

From his position, he could see the soldered on wires keeping it shut from the inside. Her faceplates could still move, but her mouth was wired closed. "If I come into your room, are you going to attack me?" he slid closer, keeping the flashlight trained on her chest. 

Funtime Foxy hesitated before shaking her head. Her hands dropped down to her sides and Mike nodded. "We want to get you a new body," he told her again. "This one is a little obvious and you'd be spotted and brought back here to this life if you stayed in it when we get you out."

She lifted a hand, pointing towards the ceiling with a curious tilt of her head.

"Yeah," Mike slipped entirely out of the vent, his feet touching the floor. "Up and out, you'd see the sky and the stars and the sunlight and you'd be free."

Closer to her, he could see the same movement limitations that Ballora'd had, her arms restricted to a cycle of motions and her legs probably stuck in small steps. Mike reached for the radio on his hip, clicking the buttons down. "Michelle, can you come down here now? Brianna, we need the lights."

"Got it," Brianna's voice came back quickly, the lights flickering to life above them. 

"See?" Mike held out his hands in what he hoped was a peaceful gesture to Funtime Foxy. "Not going to hurt you, you're actually more likely to hurt me. Like I said, my name is Mike. I worked for Freddy Fazbear's pizza a long time ago, almost twenty-five years ago."

Funtime Foxy gestured to a door off to the side, lettering proclaiming it to be 'Parts and Services'.

"Is that where they put Freddy? I couldn't find him when I ran into Ballora's gallery. I'm just really glad we got her out of her body before it was torn apart like that," Mike held up his hands when Funtime Foxy startled. "Hey, it's okay, she's alright! We got her out yesterday, walked in today to find her torn apart. We think that..." he hesitated, looking around and feeling a chill down his spine. "We think that someone in this building might have attacked her body when she wasn't in it to be talked to or something. Baby's room has been malfunctioning, we can't turn the lights on and they were burning out anyway."

Her ears perked and her eyes glowed and she let out a whine.

"Are you upset about Baby?"

It seemed like she tried to move her head but couldn't. Mike frowned, then nodded his own head. "Open your faceplates for yes and leave them closed for no. Are you upset about Baby being locked in the dark?"

Her face stayed shut.

"Alright. Are you upset about Baby in some way?"

The sight of faceplates opening was somewhat startling, wires exposed and gleaming metal shining in the light. Mike swallowed nervously, nodding again. "Are you upset about her in the same way as Ballora was?"

The faceplates didn't move, but Funtime Foxy looked confused. 

"Let me clarify," Mike stepped closer. "Are you scared of Baby getting out?"

Her faceplates swung open, then again and again and again, the metal screeching with each movement. The noise was horrible but it got the point across. 

"Yeah," Mike nodded as he put a careful hand on her shoulder. "Ballora warned us not to help her, figured there might be a similar reaction from you," he frowned as he looked at her shoulders. "You have limited movements, but it looks like you can still move around. I think we have a few minutes before Michelle comes down, do you think you can take me to where Freddy is?"

Her faceplates flicked open and she started walking towards the door she'd pointed out. 

When Mike followed, she put her hand on his head and kept it there. "Do you know what's happening with your version of Bonnie?"

Another flicker of gleaming metal.

"Do you have a name?"

She stopped in her tracks, leaning as close as she could without hitting into him and opened her faceplates slowly. On the inside of one was a word, carefully carved, in delicate script.

'Moxie'.

"Your name is Moxie?" Mike grinned. "I like it. Moxie, would you prefer I call you that?"

Her faceplates flashed open and closed again and she started walking once more. 

The door opened easily underneath his touch and he entered the room carefully. "Freddy?" Mike called out quietly. "Are you in here? If you are, can you hear me?"

Silence echoed back to him.

At his shoulder, Moxie stilled and waited, nudging him into the room. It was fairly dark so it took a moment for his eyes to adjust, but Mike could see Funtime Freddy sitting on the edge of a table. His body was limp, his eyes dark and his limbs still. He was bent over, an empty doll and it made Mike want to scream. "They deactivated him," he whispered as he stepped forward. His mouth twisted in a snarl and he stormed over to Freddy, putting both hands on the bear's chin and cheek, lifting his head so that he could look at him. "They _deactivated_ him!"

Moxie's faceplates shifted as she watched him from where she stood in the doorway. 

Mike shook his head. "I'm alright," he reassured her. "Part of the problem with how they run this place is always going to be how little they research the people they hire," he huffed out a puff of air. "Another part of the problem is how they don't try to find the children who go missing."

He turned Funtime Freddy's head towards Moxie. "The biggest problem, beyond the murders and the murderers and the disappearances," he shuddered as he took in some air, trying to cool the systems whirring beneath his skin. "Is how they treat the people they have performing on stage. You and Ballora and Baby electrocuted into compliance and left to rot beyond that, Funtime Freddy and Bonnie being 'Retired' and taken out of sight because of what is probably upset and depression when they realized they were stuck down in this goddamned place!"

Mike let Funtime Freddy's head settle back again and stepped away from him, venting air furiously. 

When Moxie stepped closer and made a curious noise, one hand lifting to take his in hers, he nodded. "I haven't considered myself human for a long time," he explained quietly. "I already talked to Ballora, we've got her in a temporary body and we've got her at the place I'm staying when I'm not here," he lifted his hand to Moxie's face. "My friend, the one I mentioned, she built me a body when my old one started rotting."

After a moment, he shook his head. "I'm not letting the same thing happen to you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apparently decided to be crazier than last year. Last year was NaNo during finals.
> 
> This year, finals include Botany and algebra for calculus and an intense history class. I'm still doing NaNo, but I'm also trying to keep an update schedule.
> 
> So, uh...I hope you enjoy this story!


	7. Night Three -- Tell Your History To The Walls

"My family seems to be woven into this place..." Michelle muttered as she stuck a screwdriver back into her belt, rotating Moxie's wrist and smiling when it moved easily. 

"What do you mean?" Mike frowned as he pulled a chair up next to her, her toolbox in his lap. "I mean, I get that your dad created the skin we use to make the android bodies. But how is your family woven into the restaurant? I thought he wasn't even really aware of who you were making bodies for."

Michelle glanced sideways at him, shrugging even as she removed the things keeping Moxie's other arm from moving smoothly. "I'm...My mom was married before she married my dad and had me. I have," she grunted as something resisted, managing it in the end. "I have a half-sister. We don't talk much, and my mom doesn't like talking about her at all. She didn't like me coming to work for Freddy's, though."

"You have a half-sister?"

"Her name is Charlie," another shrug, a gentle pushing-out-of-the-way of the hair that had swung into her eyes. "We talk at Christmas and at birthdays, but we don't...We don't really talk all that much, even then."

"Still don't get what you mean about being woven in."

"This body," she waggled Moxie's hand, grinning apologetically when the animatronic glared. "Was made by Charlie's dad. He killed himself when she was little, I never got to meet him. I think his name was...Henry?"

"Henry!" Moxie started, her eyes going bright. "Henry plays, Henry builds! Brought us here, brought us awake...The ittle girl danced, wasn't allowed near Baby's stage. Good idea, something wrong..."

Mike looked between the two of them, his head tilted to one side. "Wait, Charlie is your sister's name?"

"Yeah."

"One of the animatronics from the first place we worked together was named Charlie. The cat, remember?"

"I think he was named after her. From what I've heard," Michelle hummed as she finished. "There we go, you can move around now. Want to go to your new body and inspect it? It's not a permanent one, should just be a good temporary one. Anyway, from what I've heard, Henry loved his daughter, especially after..." she sighed and nodded when Funtime Foxy turned to look at the body waiting in a chair for her. "Go ahead."

"After what?"

"Henry and my mom had two kids. One of them got snatched by the third owner. I guess, when Fazio started going a little too sad and not helpful, he hired Henry and another guy to be co-owners," she waved Moxie towards her new body. "Rosalia said she was the second owner, I think it's because she was the second member of her family to be considered an owner of the place. After what happened, she was the one who gained the restaurant."

"What, exactly, happened?" Mike's voice was almost lost as he whispered the words. 

Michelle met his eyes. "Rosalia had a sibling set of twins. So do I," another shrug, a loss of what to say next. "Charlie had a twin brother who was snatched from the restaurant when they were three. My mom left Henry after that, remarried four years later and I was born. Dad always told me that the year I was born was tough for mom but he never really told me why. I found out later, on my own, that Henry killed himself that year."

"Well," Mike blinked a couple of times, his jaw dropped open as he thought through the information he'd been given. "That's...Holy shit?"

"Yeah," Michelle laughed. 

"Who was the third owner Fazio hired?"

"Dead now, doesn't really matter. Charlie killed him, nearly got killed herself," she paused. "She was in her twenties when it happened. Apparently, the guy was the one who snatched our brother and he tried to kill her, too. He'd also killed a bunch of other kids, I think he was the resident murderer in between Carter and Jeremy."

Mike handed her the toolbox and stood up, both of his hands pressed to his face.

Moxie looked at both of them. "Freddy," she said quietly. "Was punished."

"What do you mean by that, sweetheart?" Michelle set her toolbox on the chair she'd left. "I know Ballora was punished with her motions being limited to dancing, what about Freddy?"

"They took Bonnie away," she ran her fingers over the cheek of the body waiting for her. "And Freddy didn't like it. They'd been built at the same time, you see. Freddy and Bonnie, best friends and half in love and a little crazy about being around each other," she whined, her vocal processors failing for a moment. "And Bonnie was upset about them taking Chica away. He wouldn't follow orders, kept asking where she'd gone. She planned parties and talked to children and worried about the rest of us. She got sad first. Too sad."

"They didn't want her around kids anymore?" Mike nearly growled the words out. "They mistreated her and didn't want her around people anymore?"

"I think so," Moxie looked at him. "They took her away."

"What happened to Bonnie?" Michelle asked, a calmer tone to her voice. 

Moxie giggled. "He yelled at them. It was the bravest thing I've seen, he yelled at them and they...They reset us, put us back on our stages, and when we woke up, Bonnie was gone. Freddy was upset about that. He yelled at them too, but he's the face of this place. They couldn't just disappear Freddy!"

She was near hysterical laughter as she spoke and she sobered up after a second. "They took his hands. One of his hands was removed entirely so that he couldn't grab things anymore, the other was welded to his microphone. He spent three days off the stage while they worked on something and when he returned, there was a Bonnie puppet on his hand."

With a glance at the door to Parts and Service, Moxie seemed to sigh. "He talks to it like it is Bonnie. Either he went insane or they dumbed him down with something."

Michelle swore quietly, her hands curling into fists in the fabric of her pants. "Virus in a sentient being," she nodded slowly, her eyes still closed. "Seen it before, it is a nasty way of dealing with a misbehaving animatronic. We nearly lost someone because of it."

Ignoring both of them, Mike moved suddenly, making a beeline for the door of Parts and Service. When he got to it, he shoved both of his hands into the door, popping it open. A cracking noise followed and he glared at it over his shoulder as he kept moving. "Michelle?" he called back. "I need a little help with Freddy. If I bring him to you, would you be able to start looking at him?"

"I've got my laptop, yeah-" Michelle's eyes widened as Mike dragged an unmoving Funtime Freddy out of the storage area. 

"Good," Mike almost growled the word out, settling Freddy in the seat that Moxie had abandoned. "I'm going back in there and I'm going to find them. The ones removed, I'm going to look through this building until I find them. I'll tear the goddamn floor up if I have to, but this ends here and now!"

He stormed back into the other room, leaving Michelle to stare at his back, blinking slowly.

"Is he alright?" Moxie asked quietly.

"I think Mike might be a little tired of dealing with this," Michelle muttered. "Nearly two and a half decades of dealing with this, I'm tired too. I think he's just taking it a little harder because of what happened to him..."

 

Mike snarled wordlessly as he searched the room, careful hands digging through the boxes of wires and pieces.

The frustration in his chest was too much, felt too tight and too close. He wanted this to be over, he wanted to be home and with his partner, he wanted everyone to be safe. Baby was a mystery he didn't like and that was frustrating too. 

After a few minutes of fruitless searching, he pulled the flash beacon off of his belt, shining it into the darkness around him. There was light in the room but it was reduced to almost nothing in the brightness of the main room seeping in through the open door. "Oh, come on," he muttered, shoving an empty crate aside. When it settled again, Mike's jaw dropped, the flash dying slowly. He pressed it again and shook his head.

Against the wall were the missing animatronics.

There was a version of Chica, her normally yellow feathers a light pink, her eyes dark and her body bent over. Next to her was a lilac-purple version of Bonnie, his hands nearly brushing the floor, the guitar strapped to his front missing all four strings. "They never got rid of them," Mike stepped forward, brushing his hand over Chica's face. "Kept them locked away in the dark..."

He set the flash beacon down and pulled out his flashlight, turning it on before shining it on the underside of Chica's jaw. About halfway back was the switch and he pressed it gently. 

Chica's gears whirred, her faceplates shifting and popping open quickly, a system test before she really moved.

Her hands rose to run over the top of her head, the metal clacking together. "Hey," Mike said quietly. "We're here to rescue you. You've been in this room for a long time, it's time to leave it," he gestured to the door. "Moxie is out there, probably already switched to the new body. Michelle is the woman with the computer. We like her."

Chica looked at him, her head tilted to one side. 

"Is there anyone else in here?" Mike gestured at Bonnie's body. "I'm going to drag him out of here and get it sorted out. Is there anyone else?"

She nodded, taking his wrist in her hand and pulling him further into the room. 

At the very back, tucked into the darkest corner and only half-hidden by the sheet that was thrown over them, stood two other animatronics. For a moment, Mike startled back, his eyes wide and his systems rushing to provide an explanation before he noticed the head shapes.

Despite the golden color, the animatronics weren't Spring Bonnie and Freddy.

Instead, they appeared to be a Spring Foxy and a Spring Chica.

"The rest of the springlocks," Mike whispered, his tone verging into awe. "Are they actually people?" he asked Funtime Chica after a moment. "Or are they just suits?"

"People," she answered in a voice that sounded off in some way, wrong. 

Unused.

Mike nodded, turning back towards the door. "Go say hi to Michelle, I'll get these guys into the light again."

Chica shuffled off slowly, leaving Mike to put his flashlight on a table and get to work pulling the three metal bodies out of the darkness. He picked them up with barely any strain and started hauling them out.

 

Michelle watched, wary and confused, as a version of Chica stumbled out of the Parts and Service room

She came over and sat down next to Funtime Freddy, her head resting against the back of the chair he sat on, and she looked at Michelle. Her eyes were large and wide, the sensors trying to compensate for the sudden light she found herself in. "Michelle?" she asked carefully. 

"That's me," Michelle glanced at her screen, the lines of code detailing every inch of Funtime Freddy's personality and programming. "Are you alright?"

"Tired," Chica answered after a minute. "Confused."

Michelle set her laptop on her chair when she stood up, kneeling down to look at Chica's face. "I hear you planned parties once. What happened to make that stop?"

"Got sad," Chica's voice was wavering, her tone unbalanced. Her speakers were probably damaged, Michelle thought as she looked at the one on her chest. "They didn't like me being sad in front of the kids," she shrugged, seeming to fold into herself. "I didn't want to be..."

"But it's hard not to be sad when they're treating you like that!" Michelle hugged Chica, a frown on her face as Mike left and returned again, dragging another animatronic body with him. 

"He found us," Chica whispered. "In the dark."

Michelle nodded. "Chica?" she asked quietly, almost afraid of the words she spoke. "If I were to suggest popping your chip out of your body and getting you out that way, would that work for you? It means less time down here and more time spent outside for you. We have plenty of temporary bodies for all of you, but we left most of them up in the truck up there."

Chica nodded almost immediately, her eyes shuttering quickly, her hands coming together like she was praying. "Please," she nodded again. "Please!"

"Alright," Michelle put her hand on the spot on her head, popping open the slot and smiling at her before ejecting her chip. "Sentience and everything on here," she muttered as she turned to Moxie. "Your temporary is already down here so I can just switch you over," she popped open the slot on the slumped body. "Ready?"

"Yes," Moxie kneeled down for her, her body going limp as she was removed from it.

"Mike!" Michelle called as she switched Moxie into her new body. "C'mon, we're heading out now. Get the chips out of their heads, we need to get them more time outside. This place is miserable, they don't need to stay here anymore."

A clattering from the vent made her frown, her forehead wrinkling as she stared at it. A moment later, she shrieked when the lights went out. "Shh, Chelle, it's just me," Brianna's voice was quiet as her footsteps tapped across the floor, the beam of a flashlight showing her path. "You got Funtime Foxy switched over?"

"Yeah, just a sec," Michelle turned back to Moxie. "Moxie, gotta wake up sweetheart. Time to leave," she grinned when Moxie's eyes snapped open. "Just remember, this body is temporary, I'm building you a custom one when we get out of here and back home."

"As long as it isn't here," Moxie flexed her fingers, staring at them as if they were one of the seven wonders of the world. "I will be happy to follow along."

Brianna's flashlight drifted across the room. "There were other techs coming in," she explained. "I didn't think it'd be a good idea to be caught in the room by them and I don't think they're here to check on Funtime Auditorium, so we should be safe in here for now. Where's Mike?"

"I don't know," Michelle pulled out a small flashlight from her toolbox. "He found other animatronics, was bringing them to me when the lights dropped out. Mike?" she called again. "Mike, c'mon, we need to go."

Moxie stood up carefully, wobbling to one side. "Why isn't he talking?"

"Don't know," Brianna held a hand out to her. "Do you have a name? I'm guessing you're Funtime Foxy."

"Moxie," she took the offered hand, using it to stabilize herself. "Mike?" she called out, her voice betraying her fear. 

Michelle put a hand on her shoulder. "He'll be okay, we just need to find him. Maybe he got caught up in talking to someone. Who else was in there?"

"The oldest ones," Moxie whimpered, her eyes wide in the bright beam of light Brianna held. "They were here first, before everything else, they haven't been awake in a long time. Would he have tried to wake them up?"

"Maybe," Brianna frowned, meeting Michelle's eyes and shaking her head. "Mike's a good idiot, exactly the kind you want on your side, but he's still sometimes an idiot. I'm going to go in that room and try to find him," she smiled reassuringly when Moxie looked at her. "We'll find him, don't worry."

Moxie nodded slowly, obviously unsure, and wrapped a hand around Michelle's sleeve. "Can I see Ballora when we leave?"

"She's in Mike's hotel room, we'll go see her."

 

Brianna took a deep breath, approaching the Parts and Service room slowly. Every step she took felt too loud, too much attention drawn to her movements.

The door was open.

She didn't know if Mike had left it that way or not but it creeped her out. A dark, gaping maw in the middle of the wall like it was daring her to step inside at her own peril. She aimed her light into the room and gasped.

Golden fur.

For a moment she had to just take deep breaths, her chest trying to heave, terror ripping at her mind and dragging up decades-old memories. It took a moment for her to realize that it wasn't Freddy-shaped or even Bonnie-shaped.

It was Foxy-shaped.

Familiarity settled in and Brianna smiled as she stepped forward, leaning down to look for an activation switch. "Golden Foxy is in here!" she called back to her wife and Moxie. "I think this is who Mike was pulling out."

"Neat!" Michelle called back.

"Where'd you get off to, Mike," Brianna muttered, rolling her eyes at the idea of even being scared. The fear was old, a habit she had yet to break when it came to these restaurants. "Come out, Mike, we're not going to wait around all night! It's-" she checked her watch. "It's three minutes until the end of your shift, we're supposed to be heading out soon!"

Noises behind her had her heart racing and she moved in a second. With her flashlight beam pressed against her chest, Brianna watched another beam light up a line on the floor across the room from the vent before retreating. Her heart was pounding in her chest as she waited for a second and then rushed back across the room to Michelle and Moxie. "I think we need to leave now, the second shift is starting to show up," she hissed the words to them. 

"Shit," Michelle glanced back at the other room. "But Mike-"

"Is the only actual employee of this place of the group of us," Brianna shook her head. "If we get caught, we're looking at jail time and arrest records and lawsuits and everything. We need to leave, now."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So you may have noticed that I read the book. 
> 
> I'm actually a little weirded out by how well everything fits into my story's canon. Scott Cawthon, if you're reading this, I love your games and I am glad they exist. Please don't sue me for writing a love story between a couple of your characters.


	8. Night Four -- Waking Up

Mike's systems whirred into motion slowly as he woke up.

The room was dark in front of him and he couldn't see much, not even when he looked around and blinked a few times. The walls seemed to be pressing too tight against him and he wanted to push them away.

"Shh," came the voice he was becoming familiar with. "Be still. And quiet."

There was something in her tone, something he didn't trust, and he immediately went still. What he wanted to do was yell, scream until she let him go. What he was going to do instead was sit and listen, see what she had to say to him before he did anything. If Baby was as insane as Ballora and Moxie had been saying, he needed to find out why.

"You've been sleeping for quite a while. I think they noticed that you never left the building last night. The cameras were searching for you."

Oh, fuck.

Mike swallowed on reflex, an unnecessary action. If he hadn't left the night before, had Michelle and Brianna been able to get back out again? Had the next shift found them?

Had Baby found them?

His arms were curled tightly around his head, too close for comfort and unable to move, and Mike clenched his hands into fists. His phone was in his bag, back in the office, and he had undoubtedly missed his boyfriend's nightly call. 

It was something that they had set up on that first night, a way of telling Foxy that Mike had survived once more.

That he was able to come home.

"But they couldn't find you. I have you hidden too well," something in her voice seemed vicious, a pleased sort of anger to her tone. "I _kidnapped_ you," she hissed softly. It seemed like her voice was right next to his head.

A moment passed and it felt like she had moved away. "Don't be afraid. I'm not going to hurt you. I am only going to keep you for a little while," he nearly laughed at that, he would believe it when the thing keeping him trapped was off of him. "Try not to wiggle, though. You're inside something that came from my old pizzeria. I don't think it was ever used. At least, not the way it was meant to be used."

Something from inside her old pizzeria...

Mike fought to keep himself perfectly still, his eyes wide in the darkness. It was one of the Springlocks, had to be. Spring Bonnie and Freddy were accounted for, Spring Foxy wouldn't be this roomy...

Chica.

He clenched his teeth together as he waited for her next words. It seemed that he had stopped paying enough attention, some of them falling on the deaf ears of a panicked man. "It's just big enough for one person to fit inside. But just...Barely."

Considering how closely it was pressed against his skin, he could say that was true.

"You're in the Scooping Room," she continued. "Do you know why they call it the scooping room? It's because, **dummy** , this is the room where they use the scooper. I thought that would be obvious. Isn't that a fun name for something?" 

The anger in her voice, the mocking paired with the dangerous amusement set him on edge. Mike frowned as he listened to her. It was like...

It was like when his first job had ended. 

Orsani had finally snapped, revealed his true self, the real personality beneath everything. Baby had acted as a guide before, helpful and willing to share information. It seemed like she was frustrated with something, angry at how things were going.

His frown morphed into a grin.

He had messed up her plans, whatever they were. That much was obvious.

"The Scooper," her voice was back to how it had sounded before but Mike knew now. Knew she was pretending, knew she was angry under the layer of helpful and sad. "It sounds like something you would use for ice cream. Or custard. Or sprinkles- It sounds like something you would want at your birthday party to ensure that you get a heaping portion of every. Good. Thing," she gasped, a thrilled little noise coming from the direction he could vaguely hear her in. "I wonder, though, if you were a freshly-opened pint of ice cream, how you would feel about something with that name. Thankfully, I don't think a freshly-opened pint of ice cream feels anything at all."

There was a hand on the shoulder of the suit, a heavy weight that didn't feel proportioned like the hands he'd seen in the photos of her. Baby was supposed to be about his height. Whatever it was that stood next to him wasn't Baby's body.

"Uh-oh," it whispered. "It sounds like someone else is in the building."

A beat of silence, footsteps echoing far away. 

"Shhh."

 

"What do ye mean, 'He's missin' '? Do ye mean he wandered off after his shift?" Foxy's voice was a frustrated snarl down the line and Michelle could practically hear his nails scraping against his desk. 

"He went to go retrieve some of the others," Brianna had a hand buried in the thick tangle of Michelle's braid. "The ones who have been locked away and have been for a long time. The next shift was starting to come in, I hightailed it out of the room and down to where Chelle and Moxie and Mike were and then suddenly, while we were talking, Mike disappeared."

"That ain't good enough!" Foxy snarled. 

Michelle frowned at the phone. "We're doing the best we can!" she shot back. "It isn't our fault that the next shift showed up early. And Bri pointed it out to me, we're not supposed to even be in there. If we are, we get in actual legal trouble. We're not employees and we're not customers, at that point we're trespassers."

A clattering noise made Michelle wince back from the phone. "...Foxy?"

"Not anymore," Fred's voice came through the speakers, tinny in the way that speakerphone always made things. "He threw it and stormed off, I caught it. Am I hearing it right, is Mike missing?"

"Yeah," Brianna nodded even though he couldn't see it. "We've got two of the new ones in temporary bodies, we've got the chips for another two and we just got the hell out of there. Shit, we still need to stick Funtime Freddy and Chica into bodies," she looked at her wife. "You've got their chips, right?"

Michelle nodded. "I stuck them into the little plastic cases. Always useful to carry those."

"Good," Fred paused, sighing. "Is it the sort of disappearing we're used to?"

"What, the room is empty because a possessed animatronic woke up and killed someone?" Brianna laughed bitterly. "No, it was like someone had grabbed him the moment lights went out. I didn't hear anything, didn't see anything either. I think..."

"...You think what?"

"There's another animatronic," Brianna started slowly, frowning. "Her name is Baby and all of the others have warned us about her. We haven't ever gotten visual confirmation about what she looks like."

Behind them, sitting on the edge of the bed, Ballora looked up. Moxie sat next to her, her hands curled around Ballora's arm joints, helping her move them. "Baby is not good," Ballora said quietly. "Where did Mike disappear from?"

"Parts and Service," Michelle looked at both of them. "Why?"

Moxie frowned, the brown eyes of her temporary body flashing with light for a moment. "I heard things in there," she muttered. "Noises, like someone was moving around. I stayed away from the door, afraid of whatever monster might be lurking behind it."

"Is there a vent in that room?" Fred's voice was almost too loud, worry coming through clearly.

"Yes," Ballora was the one to answer his question, her head bobbing up and down quickly. "I saw the opening in my auditorium somethings, it lead from the breaker room to somewhere else. I never knew where that else was, only that it was. The vent was too small for me to go through."

Nodding along, Moxie's frown deepened. "Too small for our bodies to go through," she recalled, her eyes going unfocused as she searched her memories. "But not too small for our endoskeletons."

"Would have fit them just right," Ballora looked at Moxie, fear splashing across her face. 

"And Baby did visit the Scooping Room often," Moxie spoke again. "Perhaps she..."

"Oh, she might have," Ballora slid off of the edge of the bed and padded across the room to where Brianna and Michelle sat with the phone. "Baby may have been able to pull herself out of her skin whenever she wanted to. If she could, then she could use the vents to travel around the building."

Michelle paled, her eyes wide and full of fear. "Which means she could have been listening to us the entire time, following us and finding out what we were planning."

"Precisely," Ballora kneeled, her hands curling around her knees as she sat on the floor. "If Baby took Mike, they are both small enough to travel through almost every vent in that building."

"Shit," Brianna muttered before slamming her fist into the arm of her chair. "Goddamn it, how did we miss that?"

"Well, I don't think you should beat yourself up too mu- Bonnefeld?" Fred broke off. "Bonnefeld, what's happening?" a pause as he was answered, the other's voice a muffled murmur. "Uh...Well..."

"Fred?"

"It's Foxy," Fred said slowly. "Apparently, he took a car and sped out of here."

Brianna's eyebrows shot up. "Well...Fuck."

"Indeed," Fred answered solemnly.

 

"Do you ever play make-believe?"

Her voice was getting on his nerves now, the same wispy tone over and over, obviously an affectation now that he knew what he was listening for. Whatever was outside the springlock suit wasn't Baby, at least, not anymore. 

"Pretend to be one way when you are really the other..."

Mike almost laughed, almost blurted out the words, 'Like you are right now?' into the darkness surrounding him. She wasn't Baby, not from what he knew of what Baby was supposed to be like. 

"It's very important," she continued. "Ballora never learns."

A pause, ugly in the silence like she knew what he was thinking about saying.

"But I do."

Mike held himself stiff inside the suit. It was the only way to survive in it, especially since heat tended to warp the spring locks and make them snap closed. He wasn't human, he didn't have breathing to worry about all that much, but he did have heat.

"They think there is something wrong, on the inside," she was nearly too quiet to hear. "The only thing that matters is knowing how. To. Pretend."

A loud warning siren went off and Mike nearly jumped out of his skin. In front of him was Ballora's old body, a large arm with a claw shape on the end of it coming from the other side of the room and tearing it apart. 

The sounds seemed to still be ringing in the quiet room after it was finished. Mike shook his head slowly, suddenly very glad they'd gotten her out first. "I'll open the faceplates for you. That way, they can find you on the cameras. Now all you have to do," she paused again like she was trying to figure out if he was listening or not. "Is wait. I'd recommend that you keep the springlocks wound up. Your breathing and heartbeat are causing them to come loose. You don't want them to get too loose."

The faceplates were open but he couldn't see her, could barely see anything more than a few inches in front of his face. He could feel her moving away again, almost missed the final words she threw over her exit. 

"Trust me."

Mike waited until he was sure she was gone, then moved until he could put his hands in position to wind up the spring locks. Each one of them held enough pressure back to rip through a human body, he knew that.

Would it be enough to destroy him?

He didn't know.

There were skittering sounds on the floor below him, something that sounded suspiciously like small feet, and Mike closed his eyes for a moment and threw a prayer to whatever deity might have been listening. He had a suspicion and he hoped he was right. "Please," he whispered. "A-are you Ballora's little dancers?"

A pair of small, wooden nubs appeared on the rim of the springlock suit, a carved face appearing moments later. 

"You are, good," Mike smiled at it, gesturing to the springlocks. "I need help getting out of here. I think if I try to get myself out, these will go off and I'll get really hurt."

It tilted it's head to the side, seeming to watch him, as it hoisted itself up higher. 

"Ballora isn't in that body anymore," Mike said quietly. "We got her out a couple of nights ago. She was sad, she didn't want to dance anymore and she was sad. We put her in a different body and got her out. I was going to go in and grab you guys as well, you seem really fond of her."

It nodded slowly.

Mike nodded back. "She's safe. I'm guessing that you guys didn't pull her body apart like that."

It shook it's head this time, small vaguely-hands seeming to clench into what could be called fists.

"If you could help me get out of here," Mike pointed at the suit that was still wrapped around him. "I can take you to her. I think she probably misses her little dancers, she talked about you guys the entire time we were driving away from her when we got her out. I don't think she expected us to get you out too," he smiled when another crawled up next to the first. "But we want everyone to be safe and free."

The first arrival looked over his shoulder and clattered it's hands together, ruffling the edge of the skirt it wore. 

Before Mike could ask, the suit's back opened and dropped to the floor. When it hit, the spring locks slammed noisily back into place, a cacophony of sound as the animatronics unfolded and returned to their proper places. He took a step back, nearly bumping into a few of the little dancers. "Thank you, guys," he said quietly. "We need to get out of here now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, Mike, be careful.


	9. Night Five - Finding Out The Truth

When the jeep pulled into the parking lot, Foxy already had his arms crossed over his chest, glaring at the building in front of him.

He barely took his attention off of it for a moment, hardly even looked up to see Michelle and Brianna hop out of the car and come running towards him. "You two," he growled when they got close enough, panting for air in the cold around them. "Need to grab some kind of weapons. I've got mine," he unfolded and reached down to grab the bat resting against his hip, curling his hand around it, grinning when the metal creaked. "If we go in there, we don't know what shows up. There's something moving around in the walls, I can hear it."

"That might be Baby," Michelle put a hand to her side, her eyes pinned on the bat. "Did anyone see you arrive?"

"No," Foxy shook his head, back to glaring at the building. "No one in or out all day."

"...All day?" Brianna covered her eyes and groaned. "Foxy, tell me you didn't. You sat here all day and watched the place? What the hell, we need to be a bit more subtly than that."

Foxy shook his head again, pushing off the back of the car he'd driven. "I am done being subtle, lass. They have Mike in there," his upper lip pulled back in a snarl. "And there's something happening that is setting every last one o' my nerves on edge. I don't know what's happening, but Mike is alone in there and there might be a psychotic robot trying to kill him."

"He's like you now, that-"

"HE AIN'T LIKE ME!" Foxy turned on Michelle, his eyes wild for a moment. "Don't you get it? Yer top notch at your work, lass, but Mike ain't one o' us. He's a ghost in a shell, his original body decayed ages back! If something erases the binding, he's gone," he panted for a moment, his system trying to cool the spike in temperature from his anxiety. "If Baby, or whatever the threat is, manages to destroy the seal carved into his arm, Mike is gone. Ain't no kind of upgrading you can do to fix that sort of thing, lass, once he's gone..." he stuttered for a moment. "Once Mike is gone, he's gone."

Michelle's jaw was hanging open, her eyes wide as she nodded. "Shit," she hissed the word out. "I...He just...I built his body, I guess I just..."

"He always seems like one of you guys," Brianna filled in for her wife. "Sturdy and safe, new body and functioning robotics to keep the person inside the wiring alive. I guess we both forget that Mike was organic once," she pulled a taser out of her purse. "Does this work as a weapon?"

"Jus' don't hit me," Foxy sighed, looking at Michelle. "I di'n't mean..."

"No," Michelle waved his words away. "You're right. Mike's in danger if we leave him in there. I was going slow and thinking your response was over the top because I forgot about him being just slightly different. We buried his body a long time ago," she whispered her words, accepting the crowbar that Foxy handed her. "I can't believe I forgot."

"We just need to get him back now," Foxy gestured to the building. "He'll be fine if we get him back."

 

The building was quiet when they entered, Foxy in the lead with his baseball bat at the ready.

"Aren't there supposed to be at least a few people?" Michelle asked, her voice echoing softly in the empty hallways. "I mean...I know it's all tech and the people running it want there to be no interferences from trouble employees, but there's literally no one here."

Foxy nodded, heading for the elevator. "Mike said there's supposed to be. Was anyone here last night?"

"There were two tech guys, mentioned something about checking on the animatronics," Brianna shook her head when Foxy looked at her. "I only heard them when I was hiding in the vent crawl space. I'd heard footsteps and went to warn everyone."

Both the women nearly jumped out of their skin when the entered the elevator and a voice started speaking to them. Foxy merely rolled his eyes and glared up at the speakers mounted on the walls. 

"Welcome back to your last day on the job!" the tinny voice Foxy had heard on phone calls with his boyfriend was twice as annoying in person. "That is, the last day of your first week. Some of the most valued qualities that we like to see in new employees are determination, fearlessness, and a genuine disregard for instinctive self-preservation," Michelle looked disgusted, her grip on the crowbar going white-knuckled. "You've earned your one-week bonus which will be given to you in the form of a delightful gift basket!" Brianna made a face, joining Foxy in glaring up at the machinery above them. "The cost of which will be taken out of your next paycheck. We have gift baskets containing fruit, nuts, flowers, and of course, the ever-popular cash basket."

"None of that makes this better!" Michelle snarled, her shoulders tensing. 

"Using the keypad below, please enter the first few letters of the gift basket you would like to receive."

Foxy sighed and reached forward to press a button on the screen that had popped up, snorting a laugh out when it glitched under his fingertip. "Just as glitchy as Mike said it was," he muttered. "Stupid idiots can't even keep their building in workin' order..."

"It seems you had some trouble with the keypad. I see what you were trying to type and I will auto-correct it for you," there was a pause before the voice came back, almost hesitant. "Thank you for selecting: Exotic Butters."

Michelle snorted, covering her face. Next to her, Brianna shook her head. "Really?" she laughed.

"Just when you think this place is too awful," Foxy shook his head as well, watching the door to the elevator open. "It gives ye somethin' like that."

"Just be aware there are still two technicians on-site today. Try to avoid interfering with their work, if possible. Also, feel free to ask them why they are still there, and encourage them to go home."

Foxy paused, one foot raised to step out of the elevator. Michelle and Brianna stopped behind him, Brianna's face draining of blood, her eyes wide. "No," she breathed the word out. She pushed ahead of Foxy and Michelle, dropping down and crawling into the vent to reach the maintenance room on the other side. The female robotic voice echoed quietly, announcing her entrance. 

Exchanging a look, Foxy and Michelle followed after her, crawling quickly.

"-check on Ballora and make sure she's on her stage," came the male voice from above them, already directing Brianna as the other two entered the room. Brianna's hand almost slammed down on the control pad to light the room up and all three of them froze in place.

There, on the stage, was the shadow of a hanged man.

"Great," came the voice again. "Now let's check on Funtime Foxy."

"Not great," Michelle's eyes were wide and her hands were shaking. "Not great!"

Brianna swung around and slammed the button to check on Funtime Auditorium as well, her breathing harsh when the same thing was revealed. "Shit," she hissed out the word, trembling the same as her wife was. "Shit shit shit, what the fuck?"

"Hey, lass," Foxy pulled her away from the controls, letting the light go out. All three of them ignored the voice when it sounded again. "It'll be okay, we're close ta gettin' this place shut down."

"Are we?" Brianna waved her hands towards the windows. "Two men are dead, more corpses given to the history of Fazbear entertainment. I took the first job because I wanted to make sure my mom wasn't crazy. She'd always been so...So afraid of that place. This one too, when she found out about it. I had an entire childhood here and I never knew why it was the one place my mom refused to let us celebrate our birthdays."

"Wait," Foxy frowned. "What?"

Brianna sighed, pushing her hair back from her face. "When I was little, my mom worked here as one of the servers. Not here, exactly, but the place where we all met. She got dementia or something, early onset, and it screwed up her head but she was always afraid of anything marked with Fazbear's name. We spent our time here but we never got any toys from it. I never spent any birthdays here."

"You were saying 'Our' and 'We' a second ago," Foxy's face twisted, confused. "What-"

"I had a cousin," Brianna's voice was shaking. "He was sort of taken in by my parents when dad's sister died and she didn't have a husband. His dad had walked out on them about two months before the wedding was supposed to be," she looked at both of them. "It was supposed to be an investigation, I'd find enough proof of wrongdoings to take the fuckers in charge to the police. Orsani always terrified my mom and Michelle and I had met when we were little, at school."

"...My mom never let me play at Fazbear's," Michelle whispered. "She wouldn't talk about why and she never let me go see my half-sister. Her name is Charlie, her dad worked for Fazbear's. Small towns, no one ever leaves, not really."

"Wait," Foxy pulled out a phone, thumbing across the screen and typing something quickly. "Charlie...?"

"Dunwicke," Michelle moved to his side, leaning in to look at the phone. "I always knew something had happened but I never knew what. When I wanted a job so that my dad wasn't just paying for everything, Fazbear's was hiring so I took it."

"Charlotte Dunwicke, the surviving daughter of Henry Dunwicke," Foxy muttered, scrolling slowly through something he was reading. "This is saying she found the body of her twin brother inside one of the...Oh. Oh," he shook his head, offering Michelle the phone. "There was more than one murderer," he pressed his hands against his face, the bat swaying uncomfortably close to his eyes. "Charlotte Dunwicke's father designed the animatronics," he muttered. "Created them and brought them in."

Michelle took the phone almost reverently, her eyes going wider as she looked at the screen. "A business partner," she muttered. "There were three business partners. Fazio, Dunwicke, and..." she frowned, her fingers practically flying over the screen as she scrolled around. "I can't find the last name for him but it says he used 'Dave' as a name to get a job somewhere nearby."

"...Was Charlotte about so tall?" Foxy held out a hand, his eyes closed as he tried to remember. "Brown hair and eyes, kinda round-faced?"

"Yeah," Michelle took a shaky breath. "Why?"

"Because," Foxy's eyes opened and for a moment she could only see the bright yellow they had been once upon a time, nearly two decades before. "I think I met her. I think I might'a killed Dave or whatever his name was."

“…You-“

“He was attackin’ the kids!” Foxy defended himself, not looking at her. “They snuck in ta get a look at the place and he was attackin’ them, had one o’ them in a springlock suit, ready to kill him if he moved a muscle. The others and I, we dragged him away. He killed a police officer and, I’m guessin’, your half-brother,” he exhaled and it was shaky, his hands trembling as he sorted through his memories. “Ask Freddy, or Bonnie, or Chica. It was our core group, the lot o’ us, and we didn’t like the threat ta the kids. This was back when the Springlock gang was stored in our restaurant, so we had-“ he cut himself off, suddenly looking nervous. “If there was…Assume somethin’ about Chica’s original size, would that be enough to hide someone Mike’s size?”

“Springlock Chica,” Michelle nodded. “We know she was here, I think. Mike was saying something about ‘The Rest’ so I assume we have some more we need to rescue.”

“Whatever it is that Baby is,” Foxy gestured towards Funtime auditorium. “I think we need to stop her because I think she put Mike somewhere.”

Brianna was still staring into Ballora’s gallery, her hands clenched around the edge of the control board. Her knuckles were white and she looked like she was going to fall over if she didn’t have something to support herself with. Taking a deep breath through her nose, she cracked her neck and nodded. “We need to do something about this place,” she whispered. “Burn it to the ground, make sure that Fazbear’s ends in flames.”

She jolted back from the wall, falling to the ground and landing with a grunt. 

“Bri?”

“Something just-“ Brianna looked at her leg, blinking a couple of times. “…Grabbed me.”

It was one of Ballora’s dancers.

The small wooden hands were practically hooked into the fabric of her pants, tugging insistently when she continued to only look at it. It turned empty eyes towards the other two, still tugging at Brianna, then let go to point into Funtime Auditorium. 

“…Do we have to go in there?” Michelle asked.

It nodded, the tutu it wore swaying with the movements it made as it got off Brianna’s leg and moved towards the vent. Prying at the edges, it turned back towards them, making a helpless little movement with one hand.

“Here,” Foxy kneeled and pulled the vent cover off. The marionette-creature slipped through, clattering into the darkness. When none of them followed, it came back and waved them in, impatience in its posture. “Alright, guess we’re going into the dark vent and following an animatronic. Fun night for us,” he muttered as he crawled in after it. “Do you know where Mike is?” he asked it as they went through. He could feel Brianna and Michelle clambering in after them, the metal vibrating under the weight.  
It patted his cheek and leaped out of the vent.

The room was dark and it felt more like a grave than a Funtime anything. “Okay,” Michelle swallowed nervously, pulling a flashlight from her pocket. It was small but powerful, the beam lighting up the floor. “So we know where the parts and services room is,” she whispered. “Are we heading there?”

The marionette dancer shook it’s head, waving for them to follow before it started walking in a different direction.

There were more of them.

About fifteen or so in total, all with the same, carved expression and empty eyes, small tutus swishing as they paced impatiently in front of the door that the first one had led them to. Their impatience, Foxy realized as he looked at them in the bright-white light of Michelle’s flashlight, might have had something to do with the doorknob being over a foot above their grasping hands.

Brianna reached around her wife and Foxy, hesitating for a moment before knocking.

All of them waited as shuffling sounded from behind the door and it was unlocked, opening slowly. The beam of light caught the flash of dark-blue fabric on someone’s leg, the shape of a shoe in the darkness, the shine of a pair of eyes. 

Foxy nearly shrieked as he dove forward and pulled Mike against him, twirling so fast it made both of them dizzy. “You’re alive!” he hissed the words out, his eyes closing as he came to a stop, letting Mike’s feet touch the floor. He nuzzled into his boyfriend’s hair, reassuring himself by trailing his hands over his arms and back. “You survived.”

“Yeah,” Mike looked close to tearing up, a small smile on his face. His own hands were clenched, desperate and almost afraid, in the fabric of Foxy’s shirt. “I’m so glad you guys are here, but also,” he looked at Michelle. “Turn that light off and get inside the room. Now. Baby is wandering around and I’m sort of having to…Fend her off?” he jerked his head towards the door he had come through. “And, uh, you guys need to see what is happening here.”

He took Foxy’s hand and dragged him into the room first, waiting for Michelle and Brianna to follow before closing the door. Mike paused with it almost shut, kneeling down to speak to the marionettes. “Thank you, guys, for helping me,” he said softly. “Keep us safe for a little bit longer? We also still need to find Baby’s original chip.”

 

“Mike?” Brianna’s voice was louder than he would have liked in the small room, the four of them clustered around the equipment. “What is all this?”

“This,” Mike tapped one of the screens, “Is _very_ familiar to me. This is a setup like the one I had to use when I first was a security guard. The only problem with that is the fact that none of these cameras show the restaurant,” he glanced at Foxy. “They show some kid’s bedroom. I’ve been in here since I got away from ‘Baby’ and their trap and I found some notes about her. They were jammed into the vent grate,” he gestured to the wall. “Over there. Like someone had tried to hide them. They mentioned her chip being pulled out and replaced with one that was supposed to act the same.”

“Wait, they were replacing her?”

“Sort of,” Mike grabbed the papers off the desk. “It sounds like they were recreating the original chips whenever the original ones went too ‘Human’ and started being ‘distressed at the treatment they’ve received’. Basically, they were pulling them out and getting rid of them when they were too sad to function anymore. Baby was the first and last,” he held the pile out to Michelle. “She started acting in a ‘Dangerous capacity’ when they replaced her chip.”

“…Baby started acting different,” Brianna remembered, her eyes wide as she read the papers over her wife’s shoulder. “Ballora was saying something about that, that Baby had changed suddenly.”

“I’m guessing this is why,” Michelle frowned as she flipped through the pages, her jaw clenching and unclenching. “This is describing what is kind of obviously depression and anxiety. They knew what they were dealing with and didn’t want to have to own up to it, so they started by dumbing them down and trying to reprogram. When that didn’t work, they started making replacement chips for them. Entirely reprogrammable, no attitudes or personalities other than what they were given. Chica…” she flipped a page again, the furrow of her brows growing deeper. “Chica was the next in line. The company was upset about the loss of the party planning service. When Baby reacted poorly…” she shook her head, finally looking up. “They got rid of the whole project and just moved on with what they had.”

“Yeah,” Mike was shaking, the hand not holding his boyfriend’s clenched into a tight fist. “They wanted to get rid of any evidence of what they had done, so when Baby kept ‘malfunctioning’, also known as not actually being Baby, they locked her away.”

“Which is when everything here started going really wrong,” Michelle continued for him.

“And when people stopped coming to the restaurant,” Foxy added, sighing. “Don’t these idiots ever know when to stop?”

“Apparently not,” Brianna rolled her eyes. “Is there anything in there about where Funtime Bonnie went? If we have the rest of the set, we should have the Bonnie that belongs, too, not fair to the Freddy if we don’t.”

Mike flicked a finger towards the papers. “He’s with Freddy’s body,” he said quietly. “When they got rid of him, his chip was yanked out and given some dumbing down before being jammed into the small hand-puppet body. He’s still here, if you left Freddy’s body here, and we need to rescue him,” he paused, then nodded. “Just a second.”

He finally let go of Foxy’s hand and went to the door, crouching down before he opened it just a little. “Hey guys,” he whispered to the marionettes. “Would you mind going and grabbing the Bonnie puppet off Freddy’s hand? We need him.”

After what seemed to be a confirmation, Mike let the door close and turned back to the others. “…What?”

“You’ve got them helping you,” Brianna raised an eyebrow. “What the hell?”

“They’re not bad,” Mike laughed. “They’re just scared and I managed to get them to understand that we wanted to help them. They’ve only ever known people to be kind of awful and untrustworthy. We need to take them with us when we leave.”

“We _will_ ,” Michelle almost growled the words out. “Ballora misses them.”

“Alright,” Brianna sat in the chair at the desk, taking a deep breath. “What do we need to do, right now? We’ve got them helping us, we’ve got the notes about everyone here, we’ve got enough evidence-“

“Shut that vent,” Mike rushed past her, slamming it quickly. They all listened, eyes wide, as what sounded like claws scraped down the other side of it, followed by a shriek and the noise of metal against metal. “Okay, good, Baby’s gone. Well, the thing that has Baby’s body, at least. She is actually stuck in a chip somewhere in the building if the notes are telling the truth,” he grinned nervously at Michelle’s angry expression. “Yeah, that’s _why_ I’ve got Ballora’s dancers working with me. We’re getting _everyone_ out, that means the ones who were supposed to be here in the first place.”

He returned to the door, pulling it open carefully and kneeling down again. “Thank you. Did you find Baby’s chip yet?”

Another one of them stuck out its hands, a small plastic case held between them. 

“Good,” Michelle sat down next to Mike. “If that thing is in the building, I don’t feel comfortable with them being outside the door. Can we bring them in here?” she took the chip and tucked it into her pocket. “No one gets left here,” she almost growled the words out. “And when we’re all out, we burn this place to the ground.”  
Brianna shook her head. “’Chelle, we can’t. The two on the stages.”

“…Damn it,” Michelle groaned.

“On the stages?” Mike looked at them, then at Foxy. “What did I miss?”

“The thing that is pretending to be Baby,” Brianna said, “Hanged the two technicians from last night. They are now corpses suspended above the stages in Funtime Auditorium and the Gallery. Did you leave this room last night?”

“No,” Mike shook his head. “Every time I tried, the dancers would swarm and shove me back in here. I’m surprised that they even let you get in, actually. Oh,” he held the door open, waving them all into the room. “Everyone in, we need to buckle down until we can be safe from whoever this is. It’s not Baby and,” he tucked the Bonnie puppet closer to his body. “We know we can’t trust them.”

A soft clattering of wooden feet against the floor was the only noise the marionettes made as they filed into the room. “How many are there ‘sposed to be, lad?”

“Fifteen,” Mike counted them quickly. “Pretty sure, at least. I haven’t ever seen more than that, haven’t found anything saying there should be more than that. Did Ballora mention a headcount? She’s probably the best option to ask.”

“Ballora,” Brianna muttered, patting herself down suddenly. “Ballora and Moxie, hm,” she frowned, digging a hand into the pocket of her pants, a victorious noise pulled from her throat when she dragged a phone out. “We have the hotel room phone on our phones because we might have needed to call you,” she explained when Mike raised an eyebrow at her. “Moxie and Ballora are there, we can call them and ask how many dancers there are supposed to be. We can also,” she took a deep breath, watching them settle on the floor around Foxy’s feet. “Call the Freds and see what we might be able to do in terms of getting out of here without dying.”

With a sound that was caught between laughter and panic, Mike nodded. “I…Might also ask that we bring the equipment in here with us. Or at least,” he paused, then handed the Bonnie puppet to Michelle’s outstretched arms. “The recordings it has made.”

“Why?” Michelle’s voice was soft as she turned to look at the screens. “Mike, what is-“

They were showing a bedroom.

Brianna frowned again, “This looks like a kid’s bedroom,” she whispered. “…Why is there video feed of a kid’s room?”

“It’s not _just_ a kid’s room,” Mike scooted towards it, closing the door behind as he did. “It’s a very specific room. It has toys from the eighties, posters, and furniture from that time, too. The screens in here have been updated a little, but I’m willing to bet that the cameras we’re watching seem grainy because they’re just that old.”

He reached up past Foxy’s elbow and tapped the screen, over the bed. “There’s a baseball bat on the floor, barely poking out from underneath it. On the handle, it’s going to have Michael Jacob Schmidt, written in crappy little kid handwriting. You know the kind, with the E backward? Yeah,” he took a deep breath, then nodded. “You won’t even ever see it, but there used to be bloodstained pillows. Part of why I didn’t leave this room last night, besides the mini ballerina marionettes stopping me, was the fact that the screens in here are showing my goddamned childhood bedroom.

“When my parents retired,” he made a sound like he was swallowing nervously. “They sold the house. Asked me if I wanted anything from it, I said no. I’d spent way too long in it. Too many bad dreams.”

“…That’s why you took the job at Freddy’s,” Brianna’s voice was hoarse when she spoke, Michelle looking too horrified to even make a sound. “You mentioned, way back, that you needed rent money. I was wondering why you couldn’t just go to your parents. I mean, probably not rich considering that you said you went when you could, as a kid.”

“My mom’s first husband, my biological father,” Mike began quietly. “Died when I was two or three. I’d had a big brother, a couple years older than me, who died in the car crash with him. Something about someone running a red light, my mom never liked talking about it and I don’t blame her. After that, she was left to raise me, alone. I was seven when she remarried and my dad is an awesome man who didn’t stop loving his new family when his stepson got damaged,” he shrugged, waving away the look of worry that Foxy wore. “Don’t even. We’ve talked about it before, I don’t blame you and I do love you.”

“He was around for that whole thing,” Michelle covered her face with her hands. “What about getting help from your parents?”

“I…Didn’t want the help,” Mike shook his head, hands already raised to fend off questions. “We weren’t the richest of families and my medical bills cost a lot. I turned eighteen and went off on my own. I had this whole thing in my head about being a cost burden, they’d spent enough money on me…It should be noted that the brain damage I got was the kind that affects decision making and rationality.”

Brianna blinked, opening her mouth like she was going to tear into him. 

“I know,” Mike winced. “My dad also lost his job around the time, so I figured that me asking for money wouldn’t make anything better. I wasn’t the best at holding down a job, could barely manage to convince people to hire me in the first place. Disability wasn’t as good back then as it is now, either, so I couldn’t really apply for that, either. I functioned just fine, people could barely tell that there was something off about me.”

He gestured at the screens again. “Those cameras are set up in my old house, the one my parents sold when I was moved out on my own. The only thing that was really an issue was when I told them that I was doing fine. They retired and moved away, to Florida, because my mom hates being cold.”

“…Is this a current feed?” Michelle finally managed to ask.

“The numbers are scrolling,” Mike pointed to them. “So…I think so? It looks like it’s still recording.”

“Why is your childhood bedroom still setup,” Brianna muttered. “And why are they recording it? Did your mom leave it like it was?”

“She told me that she was going to trash everything in there if I didn’t want it,” Mike shrugged. “I’d have to ask my parents. I remember there being something about an unreasonably good deal on the house, double their asking price and an excited set of parents-to-be. They’d told my parents about the house being perfect for their kids or something.”

“Wait,” Michelle’s frown was thoughtful now, her eyes focused on Mike. “Do you know what they looked like?”

“Not offhand.”

“Next question,” Foxy’s voice was a rough rumble, worry making it strained. “Did you…You were injured. It was the fault of the company. Do you think that, maybe, the people in charge at the time were trying to keep an eye on you and make sure you didn’t file a lawsuit?”

“What, and if his parents did, they were going to kill them or something?” Brianna laughed. “I’ve literally only seen things like that in spy novels and horror stories.”

“We live in a world with sentient machines like myself,” Foxy shrugged at her. “Where people like Mike exist because of a mark carved into the metal inside his arm. I don’t think we get the luxury of denying a possibility because it seems silly. You’ve dealt with ghosts of children murdering your coworkers for the sake of gettin’ revenge on their own murderer. Lass,” he laughed nervously. “If ye haven’t noticed by now, we’re _livin’_ a horror novel.”

“…I,” Brianna stuttered a couple of times before she sat back in the chair, blinking. “Shit, we are.”

“Does it make it better or worse if I remind you that your dad’s the one who made Mike possible?” Michelle reached over to take her wife’s hand. “Because I remember him being the one to make the sigil that keeps Mike here,” she looked at him, frowning again. “Mike?”

He had his face covered. “I don’t…” a deep breath, a pause as the internal fans whirred. “It was so long ago now and back then, I had an organic brain that lost pieces of my memories sometimes.”

“Breathe,” Foxy dropped to the floor next to him, wrapping his arms around his boyfriend. “What can ye tell us about it? Focus on what you do remember. We’re here if somethin’ goes wrong. Right here, not leavin’. Just focus on the memories that are clear.”

“I was…Afraid,” Mike shoved the heels of his palms into his eyes, blocking out any sort of light. “Mom and dad were terrified that I was going to die, mom kept crying. Adult rationality now says that she was afraid of me dying like my brother. We’ve all got people who died, I’m the only one who didn’t lose or almost lose my family to Fazbear’s…” he shook his head, hands held firmly in place. “But my mom was terrified. Dad took up watching me, put a stool inside my room.”

“A stool?” Michelle glanced at the monitor. “Not in the room on the screen, where did it go when he wasn’t in there?”

“It came from the hallway,” Mike hesitated, then nodded. “It was something from my grandmother’s house, she passed away when I was eight. She always had it in her kitchen, specifically for someone to sit on while talking to whoever was cooking. Dad would pull it to the doorway and sit in it and read. Sometimes he read out loud to me, and then it was a book he thought I’d like or a comic he described because I couldn’t read them anymore. Not then, at least, not until I got a bit better.”

“What about your mom?” Brianna’s voice was gentle. “Where was she in all this?”

“She didn’t like being in the room. We lived close to the hospital, they allowed my parents to take me home because the doctors could have me in front of them in less than five minutes. They,” Mike shivered. “Mom would come in at night and hug the parts of me she felt safe hugging. When dad wasn’t sitting on the stool, he’d put a stuffed rabbit on it, said that it was supposed to guard me.”

A screeching noise came from the vents around them, Foxy jolting to sit in front of Mike, blocking any sort of way that someone could reach his boyfriend. “We need to get out o’ here,” he muttered. “We should grab the tapes and everythin’ and just run fer it.”

“I’m on it,” Michelle twisted around and got to work on the computer. “There’s a hard drive, we leave here tonight with proof of what Fazbear’s has done to everyone.”

“Good,” Foxy snarled, his arms held tightly around Mike as he glared at the vents. The marionettes were clustered around them, now, their small hands patting gently at the smaller android’s legs. “We need to destroy these people, they keep doin’ nothin’ but make everyone miserable,” he picked Mike up, holding him close. “I’ve got ye, lad, we’re gettin’ out of here even if it means I have to break down a wall.”

Mike nodded, his eyes unfocused as he tried to remember.

 

Funtime Auditorium was still dark when they opened the door cautiously.

“Shh,” Foxy whispered, his eyes glowing dimly. “We might have a guest. Lights low, voices down, don’t think it matters much how we walk. Straight line might be the worst idea, lets us get picked off one by one.”

Michelle scooted around him, patting Mike on the arm as she passed. Her flashlight was on and aimed at the floor, her steps cautious and quiet. Brianna followed after her, a hand clasped over her own mouth, her eyes focused on the patterns of light created by her wife’s flashlight. They were both trembling and in Foxy’s hold, Mike was still unresponsive. 

“Did you mean to hide from me?

All four of them jolted, stopping where they stood. The marionettes stopped too, tumbling over one another as they fell to the ground.

“I don’t know if you did,” came the voice that had once belonged to Baby. “You were in that room for so long. You didn’t let them find you on the cameras,” a soft giggle came from above their heads. “That’s not how the game works, silly,” it was closer this time, sending a shiver up the spines of the two organic bodied people. “You’re not supposed to hide from _me_ , you _idiot_.”

“That’s how it works when you’re actually Baby,” Mike finally spoke up. “Not when you’re you.”

“She isn’t here anymore,” the words sounded like each one took a monumental effort. The pitch of the voice was dropping, deepening bit by bit. The tone of it was familiar and Mike frowned as he wiggled his way out of his boyfriend’s hold. When his feet touched the ground and he was looking up, his eyes were faintly glowing as well. “You’re going to have to leave her a note.”

It was the voice of the Hand Unit.

“I spent so long in this place,” Mike said quietly. “I know these restaurants, I know how they work. The building being an AI, that’s kind of a new one, but it still fits within the things I know about this business.”

“You don’t know me,” the creature looming above them snarled. There was a screech of metal on metal, sparks flying into the darkness, and then a booming echo of something heavy landing on the floor. “I kept myself plugged into the building, made myself important. They can’t get rid of me the way they got rid of her,” another shriek of metal, like something dragging across the floor made Michelle jump. “You think they’ll get rid of me? They can’t get rid of me. I’m the one in control of this building, they need their guidance system.”

Mike barely registered the marionettes wandering off into the darkness. “Yeah? Then why do you need people in here?”

“There are some things I can’t do,” it hissed, a clattering noise coming from the direction it was in. 

“Alright, so you’re saying you can’t do everything?” Mike shook his head at Foxy, waving away the protective worry on his face. “Your body doesn’t work like that, they didn’t build you for that. There-“ he hesitated, taking a glance at Brianna. She held the notes still, pressed against her stomach, her eyes wide and afraid for the first time he could remember. “There was a mention of an unfinished one. A greeter. Would have stood at the door. Was that you?”

A clicking noise echoed, like something cycling through a system, and it hissed. “Yes.”

Something else whispered behind them, all four of them focused on the creature that was barely illuminated by the dim lights from the androids and the quivering beam of light from Michelle. “What can we call you? You’re not Baby, you don’t get her name,” Michelle’s voice was shaking, too. Her entire body was trembling and she looked like she wanted to be anywhere else. “So who are you?”

“Ennard,” it growled out pieces grating together as it spoke. Before anyone could say anything else, Ennard shrieked and rushed at Mike, swinging sharp endoskeleton pieces at his face.

Foxy moved forward first, reaching to pull the thing away from his boyfriend, trying to get them both away from the humans. A sudden breeze of air hit the group of them, some other being coming out of the darkness and slamming bodily into Ennard, knocking it to the floor. A glimpse of gold fur made all four of them hesitate, but Mike moved closer to watch, letting Foxy steady him. “Holy shit,” he whispered. “That’s-“

“Golden Foxy,” Foxy himself said, eyes wide as he wrapped protectively around Mike. “Oldest version of me to exist.”

Brianna let out a whoosh of air, deflating slightly from where she had been holding her breath. “We need to help him, then!” she made a face. “I don’t think organic people should be involved in this particular-“

A shriek of metal interrupted her, making her and Michelle shrink back slightly, both of them looking sick. Mike and Foxy winced as well, looking over to see Golden Foxy slouched over Ennard, hands braced under the endoskeleton’s chin. “I don’t like threats,” he growled in the voice of William Bradect. “Especially not ones aimed at kind folk like ye.”

Brianna’s breath caught again, the notes nearly dropping to the floor. 

“Ye be a’right, lass?”

“Do ye remember the man whose voice you’re using?” Foxy kneeled down next to his counterpart, still holding Mike’s hand. Neither of them seemed to notice, the point of contact keeping them both happy for now. 

“…Ye sound like me,” Golden Foxy said quietly. 

Foxy nodded. “I do, yeah. The same man gave us both our voices. Brianna, over there, that’s the voice of her father. Do you want ta come out of here? It’s safer out there, I promise. Pretty sure you just,” he glanced at Ennard for a moment. “Decapitated our threat. He’s not gettin’ up from that, I think. We want to go home and it’d be nice to bring everyone home with us.”

“Everyone?” Golden Foxy’s ear twitched. “Where be my mates?”

“Fred and Bonnefeld are already at home,” Michelle stepped carefully closer, crouching down and smiling at him. “If I remember correctly, the poster said your name was Archibald? A good Captain’s name, that’s for sure.”

“Aye,” he nodded, eyes flicking towards her. “What about Edmund?”

“Edm-“ Michelle sat back on her heels, her hands on her thighs. “I don’t…I’m sorry, I don’t know who you mean.”

Archibald moved his hands for a second, almost incomprehensible motions, then growled and turned to look around the room. “Looked like that,” he managed to say after a few moments. “But in sensible colors.”

Mike turned to look, an eyebrow raised. The other joined it when he saw what Archibald was pointing at. “Uh, that’s Chica,” he turned back, blinking a couple of times. “Well, that’s how we know that particular body.”

“Right,” Golden Foxy nodded. “And the one I knew, he was named Edmund.”

“…Your Chica was male,” Brianna spoke up, going to stand next to her wife. “Declared himself so or was so when he was made?”

“He said he was, so I believed him. Ain’t more than that needs sayin’!” Golden Foxy’s eyes flashed a deeper color for a moment and he stood up, kicking Ennard’s body across the room. The head was left behind and he nudged it towards them. “…Ye seem ta want ta rescue everyone, here’s where the important bits are.”

“Not sure I want to,” Michelle picked it up, discarding the clown mask with a shiver of fear. “But I’ve made it my mission and others have tried to kill me, so I might as well try to save this one.” 

She looked at the nearly empty eyes. “Maybe this one stays in a body we can keep a constant eye on.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have been gone for so long, I apologize for that.
> 
> Hopefully you like this story, hopefully you like this chapter. I just got into a rut and my brain didn't want to work right. It's here now and I...This series is coming to a close. It has been about three years now, give or take, and it is time to let it sleep.
> 
> Still have to finish up this part and the other part, but there's only about six more chapters or so, all combined.


	10. Moving On (Where Do We Go)

“Mike?”

He turned to look at her, his hands clasped together in front of himself. “We’re ready to go?” he held his hands closer, protectively tightening his grip on the small thing he held. “Is it ready?”

“It’s ready,” Brianna grinned at him, holding out her hand. “Ready to give us the last piece?”

Mike handed over the small chip he’d been holding for days now, so long it felt like weeks, maybe even months. “She’s going to be confused,” he said quietly. “It’s been so long since she was awake and aware, she’ll be so confused. We’ve got Ballora waiting, right? Ballora and her were basically sisters, from the stories I’ve heard.” He followed Brianna when she started walking, both of them glancing over to see the newspaper, framed and hanging on the wall, and grinning in synch.

“Ballora is there,” Brianna stopped to adjust how the frame sat, straightening it and brushing a stray hair off the glass. “We wouldn’t do this without her.”

 _‘Fazbear Entertainment shut down for good!’_ the newspaper told them, black print and gray paper and a stark image of the building with police tape surrounding it. When Brianna was satisfied with how it was hanging, she stepped back and nodded, just once. “And Ballora is actually excited, now that she knows Baby wasn’t the one causing such chaos. She’s waiting with a few books, I think she’s going to give them to Baby and let her be a kid for a while.”

“Good,” Mike nodded, watching her stare at the frame for a second. “Hey, Brianna?”

“Hmm?”

“It’s over.” He paused, then shrugged when she looked at him. “The nightmare of everything that went on there, it’s over. The place is shut down, androids are on their way to getting rights, the world is adjusting to a new population. The body count of that place is finally being stopped. We,” he took her hands from the frame, holding them gently. “We did good. We helped them.”

“We were living in a horror movie,” she muttered.

“We were, that’s true and no one can deny it.” Mike shrugged again, swinging their hands back and forth for a moment. “But we survived. We helped a _lot_ of other people survive. We helped a lot of people get to a better place, we’ve…Yeah, we lost a couple along the way. I actually miss Harvey and Jeremy. But we helped them. Harvey and Jeremy found each other again, your parents got to know the ending of the story.” He waited, thinking. “Your mom’s paranoia was justified, you did what you set out to do. Got a wife along the way.”

Brianna laughed at that, letting go of one of his hands and wiping at her eyes. “I did, yes. Got a wife and a happy life, even when we have to sometimes deal with things like this. Still hoping this is the last time. With the advance of tech, I’m not sure I want to see what a new generation of ‘Animatronics’ would be like. Maybe they’d just be non-sentient.”  
She paused. “That would be good. Stop trying to enslave sentient beings, world, it never ends well.”

“People end up dead,” Mike agreed. 

“And then I end up seeing more corpses and that is not a trend I particularly like.” Brianna laughed again, still wiping at her eyes. “But I think we’ll be okay now. The story is ending, the place is shut down. We’ve rescued everyone, the Springlocks are back together, the Funtime crew is about to be.” She smiled, letting go of his other hand and continuing towards where Michelle was. “So let’s get that started.”

“You okay now?”

“I think I will be,” she thought about it, then nodded. “Definitely will be.” Holding up a thumb, she grinned. “Honestly, though, who the hell would have thought we’d end up here? You’re an android, Michelle and I are married…Artem and Riley are watching over the others, by the way. We didn’t just leave them alone and unprepared. Dota was damaged, we got those two to help keep the peace.”

“Good,” Mike knocked on the door to Michelle’s temporary workspace. “Michelle?”

“Come in!” she called.

When the door opened to reveal the other woman, she had a flashlight out and was checking the wiring of the small drawer sticking out of the underside of the arm of the android body in front of her. “This,” she gestured to it when Mike made a face. “Is where Baby’s chip is going to go. I’m banking on people not grabbing for her armpit if they try to hurt her like they tried with Dota.” Michelle smiled. “Should keep her a little safer. A couple of decades, I might not be around to do that part anymore.”

“As if I’d leave them alone,” Mike rolled his eyes, trying to ignore the wave of panic that rose at the mention. “So this is the body, then?”

It was the shape of a little girl, with red hair and although the eyes were closed, Mike could guess what color they were going to be. Her face and arms were covered in freckles like someone had taken a bucket of paint and a brush and splattered it everywhere. She was small, both of her hands tiny enough to fit in one of Mike’s, and he instantly wanted to protect her. Harris had transitioned from a child’s body less than a year after his original one had been built, decades spent in the restaurant having sufficiently prepared him. In his words, he had spent enough time as a child and he wanted to be able to be something else in the eyes of the world.

Michelle had happily provided him a body.

Baby, however, was going to be a child immediately. With the trauma she had gone through, it was likely that she would stay that way for a while.

Mike handed over her chip when Michelle held out a hand. Something shifted in the corner and Mike looked up to see Ballora. Her hair was up in a bun, a soft sweater pushed up to her elbows, jeans in a complimentary color showing off the dancer build she still had.

Her arms were splattered in a rainbow of paint, a splotch of purple on one of her cheeks.

“Hello Mike,” she said quietly. “Do you think…” she hesitated, looking at the books she was holding. “Do you think she’ll like these?” she held one of them up. It looked interesting, a woman holding a pig to her chest and making an annoyed face. “I was told these were popular a while ago, but that they should be good for someone who likes happy stories.” Ballora hesitated again, making her own face. “What if she doesn’t? What if she likes mysteries, or…Or horror stories? I should-“

“Hey,” Mike moved over to her, putting a hand on her shoulder. “You’ll be okay too. We’ll wake her up and she’ll be here and safe. You’ll be able to look after her. If anyone tries to touch her, I’m pretty sure you’re just going to destroy them.”

Ballora nodded slowly. “I will not allow her to be taken away again,” she said softly. “I had no choice once. Now I will keep her safe.”

“Guys?” Michelle called for them. “Kind of need the chip containing her now. She’s been trapped long enough, let’s show her the world without the barriers of people trying to control her with pain and fear. How about it?” she held out a hand. “Time for Baby to wake up and hopefully be happy.”

Mike handed over the chip, watching as Michelle slipped it into the slot and closed the drawer.

For a moment, the entire room held their breath, tense as they waited.

Then Baby’s eyes blinked open, lighting up for a second before she moved her head to look one way, then the other. She made a noise, startled and unsure, then looked at Michelle. “…Hello?” she said, her voice smoother than the false one Ennard had used. “I- I don’t know who you are.”

“Baby,” Ballora was up and out of her seat in an instant. “You know me, though I do look a little different. We always sang together,” she smiled. “We don’t have to perform anymore.”

“Ballora!” Baby’s eyes lit up again, just for a second, before she lunged forward and wrapped her arms around the other in a tight hug, squeezing her as close as she could. “They took me away, they tried to do things to me to make me behave.” She moved her legs to one side, pulling Ballora even closer. “I don’t want to go back; do we have to go back?” 

She sounded close to crying.

Ballora’s arms came up to wrap just as tightly around Baby, her face twisting into a worried expression as she listened to what was, for all intents and purposes, the fear of a little girl she loved like family. “We _never_ have to go back,” she hissed the words out. “Baby, I need to see your face for a moment.”

The little girl nodded, slowly loosening her grip until Ballora could pull back. “Sorry…”

“It’s fine,” Ballora smiled at her, still uncertain about her facial expressions. The smile was a little weak, unsteady, but she was getting better at it. “These people are good. Mike found us,” she gestured to him. “And then Michelle built our bodies for us.” She gestured to Michelle next, then at Brianna. “And Brianna is good too. She’s one of the ones who helped us get out of there. We’re in Mike’s house, far away from where we were.” 

She paused, then put her hands on Baby’s cheeks. “And we never have to go back. We never have to perform unless we want to, we never have to go back, and we never have to go through what they did to us ever again.

Brianna laughed. “And there’s more than just you two,” she grinned when Baby looked at her. “We’ve got an entire family of people just like you.”

“There’s more of us?” Baby’s voice was a whisper, her eyes wide. 

“There’s a _lot_ of us,” Mike answered her. “And I think they’re going to celebrate having you around and having you safe. None of us will ever let them find you again. When we say you’re safe, we mean that you’re safe. No one will ever shove you onto a stage and force you to perform and if someone comes near you that makes you unhappy, you can come find any of us and we’ll make it stop.”

Baby’s face twisted into an expression that would normally come with tears, her hands still twisted in the fabric of Ballora’s sweater. “I-“ she made a sobbing noise, looking at the humans. “I like you all,” she managed to say softly. 

“You have time to figure it out,” Ballora looked at Michelle, who nodded, then scooped Baby off the table. “In the meantime, we have books to read and movies to watch and I am going to be with you the entire way. You’ll meet some of the others as we go along. If something gets uncomfortable, you need to tell me or one of them, alright?”

“Yeah,” Baby nodded, hiding her face in Ballora’s shoulder. 

 

“So we’ve got one more,” Foxy leaned against the door, watching Mike carefully. “This one stayin’?”

“I think so.”

Foxy nodded, pushing off the door and crossing over to where Mike was. “So how goes looking into yer childhood?” he dropped onto the couch next to him, pulling him so that his back was against the pirate’s chest. “Or are ye tryin’ to distract yourself right now?”

“I’m just…” Mike sighed, allowed himself to be moved, then covered his face with his hands. “I’m trying to figure it all out. Why was it so important they keep an eye on my house? We weren’t in any state to be suing them, even if we should have, and I guess I just don’t know. I don’t know why it’s so important, I don’t know why we’re where we are right now, I don’t know about any of it. I tried to find answers and all I can find are more questions!”

He pushed his laptop away with a foot, curling into Foxy’s arms entirely.

With a small smile, Foxy pulled him into his lap. “Can’t answer some of that,” he rubbed his chin into Mike’s hair. “But I guess I can say that it worked out pretty well? I mean…Some of it wasn’t good, some of it will never be good. Lots o’ death and murder, but we’re…”

“We’re here,” Mike finished for him. “And we’re alive.”

“Fazbear’s is finally gone,” Foxy nodded. “We’re relics that can move on with our lives now. I intend to do just that, especially if I have you at my side.”

“It feels…Weird. It’s always been there, we’ve always had to deal with it and maneuver around it and we’ve never quite had to…Deal with it being gone.” Mike turned his head to look at his boyfriend. “You know? Even when the old one burned down, we were still trying to work around it and keep ourselves fixated in time by how much we were doing to keep them from hurting more of us. Our entire existence, up to this point, has been focused on that goddamned restaurant. Yours especially, the others as well, but even me and then Michelle and Brianna, Artem and Riley to some extent. Michelle has been working for the place since she was a lot younger and just started getting into robotics.”

“And Brianna…” Foxy winced. “Yeah, I see what you mean.”

“Bri’s mom went almost insane with suspicion about the man who worked as her boss and tried to kill me. Even with Alzheimer’s, she was still tied to the restaurant so tightly,” Mike groaned, covering his face. “Even if you ignore _that_ , she’s still so much a part of it. Her and her husband. They were the originals.”

“William Bradect gave me an’ the other Foxys voices,” his voice was quiet. “Don’t have to remind me about that part.”

Mike turned around in his lap, burying his face in his chest. It was a credit to Michelle’s work that nothing ground together, feeling almost like a human would in the same situation. “Every part of our entire group has been steeped in this bullshit for so long.”

“Kind of a ‘Where do we go from here’ sort of feeling?”

“Yeah.”

“Hm.”

They sat together for some time, both of them thinking, and Mike wrapped his arms around his boyfriend. Foxy broke the silence, clearing his throat and waiting until Mike looked up at him. “I think I’ve decided on a name.”

Mike laughed. “Yeah? Fifty years of the same one finally getting to you?”

He laughed again at the golden-eyed glare he got in return.

“None o’ the other versions decided to keep the name ‘Foxy’,” he started slowly, quiet again. “So I was thinking of keeping it as my main mode of address but legal-wise being Laughlin Schmidt.”

“…Wait,” Mike pulled back again, blinking a couple of times. “Did I miss a civil rights movement? Pretty sure we’re still not allowed marriage rights and stuff, not just yet. Not to mention, my birth certificate says I should be…A _lot_ older than I am. I still look in my twenties, I’m kind of certain that the government is going to have something to say about me being apparently immortal.”

Foxy snorted. “I really don’t care what the goddamned government has to say, we’re a new group o’ folk and we’re still hammerin’ out where the boundaries lie. If I were to say, however, that I immigrated and my situation is like yours to the folk who ask, I’m pretty sure we can get away with it. I don’t need a paper from humans to tell me how to live my life. And,” he glanced down at their hands, taking Mike’s left in his own. “If yer okay with it, I’d like to have yer last name. We don’t look enough alike, so even the most idiotic jackass is gonna know we’re not related.”

“…I can acquire rings, somehow. Michelle might be persuaded to make them, or I could buy them,” Mike looked at their hands as well. After a second, he frowned. “Wait, why ‘Laughlin’?”

“Jus’ liked it, that’s all.”

“Alright then.” Mike dropped back down, head back against his chest. “So we’re going to tell the world we’re married without really being married but fuck it they don’t need to know the specific details anyway?”

“Exactly.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy fuckballs I am back.
> 
> Sorry about the absence, school tried to eat me. I survived, just barely, and I am back and updating pretty much EVERYTHING before Spring Break ends and school takes me into it's sharp teeth once more.


	11. Circling A Conclusion (Years In The Dark)

“Baby?” Michelle’s voice was quiet. “What do you remember from when you were asleep?”

“I remember…Snow.” Baby’s voice was hesitant, her hands clenched in her lap as she leaned against Ballora’s side. “There was a party! Everyone was traveling together and sometimes we’d find someone new and they would join the party. We had to find the clocks, that was important. I…” she looked up, her green eyes almost glowing. “I don’t remember why that was important.”

“Do you remember who was with you?” Michelle smiled at the young-looking-android, clicking into a file on her computer. Baby had been having nightmares, had asked Michelle to help her figure them out.

“Everyone,” Baby said earnestly, her green eyes wide. She smiled a little. “Everyone was with me and we played with these creatures who seemed like they should have been in children’s books! We walked around and sometimes there were trees that were doors and the doors led into different places. It was weird but it was fun. And then…” she frowned, her entire body seeming suddenly too small. “Then there were things that weren’t as fun. I want those ones gone, but I liked everything else.”

Michelle nodded, still clicking through files and scanning the code on her screen. “It looks like you’re the way you should be,” she bit at the inside of her lip, her eyes narrowed. “Nothing is reading as out of place.”

“Do you need my chip out?” Baby offered her arm to Michelle. “If it helps…”

“I might need to take a look,” Michelle stepped closer to her, smiling. “I’ll get you back awake soon, make sure you’re safe. If it helps, I’ll have Ballora come in and watch over you while I’m doing this. Make sure you’re alright every step of the way.”

“I…” Baby bit her bottom lip, looking every inch the small child she was always assumed to be. “That would be good.”

“Is there anything else you remember?”

Baby paused, her eyes going unfocused. “There were secrets,” she said quietly. “Secrets buried in the code. Things that were hidden on purpose, so that no one could find them unless they knew what they were looking for.”

“Secrets?”

Green eyes closed and stayed that way. “Missing people,” Baby hesitated. “And the owners.”

 

~

 

The house was lit from within.

Mike stared up at the door from where they had pulled into a parking spot. It was one thing to go home when you were just the grown-up version of yourself. It was another thing entirely, he thought as he studied the paint around the windows, to return home when you were a mechanical amalgamation of spirit and machine. With a hand that should have been trembling from nerves, he opened his door and turned in his seat.

“Ye don’t have ta go up,” Laughlin’s voice came from beside him.

“Yes,” Mike looked back at his boyfriend, feeling the mechanics in his arm twitch once, twice, then return to normal. “I really do.

“Then I’m goin’ with ye,” Laughlin said it in such a way that it didn’t sound like a suggestion. “Whatever is in there, yer not facin’ it alone. I mean,” he leaned into the backseat and grabbed a large flashlight. “If there’s something in there. I spent this long trying to keep you, I’m not goin’ ta let anything happen to ye now.”

“Aw, thanks,” Mike laughed, taking the other flashlight Laughlin held out. “Love you too.”

For a moment, Laughlin held his gaze, then reached out and took his hand, pressing an oddly-warm kiss to the back of it. “Never doubt that I love ye,” he murmured. “Let’s go finish the nightmare, right?”

Mile exited the car first, glancing at the setting position of the sun.

It was nearly dark out, he realized. The same way it had been for every time he had shown up for something to do with Fazbear’s name. Every night shift, every near-death, everything that had ever gone wrong, it had always happened at night. A part of him wondered if it was a bad idea, a dark omen of sorts, to keep that chain going.

But the house beckoned, filled with memories of a strange childhood.

Bolstered by the guiding hand on his back, Mike walked in step with Laughlin up to the front door. “This place seems so much the same,” he muttered, leaning into his fiancé’s side. “Usually, all people talk about when they visit their childhood home is how different it is but this place is the same.”

“Exactly?”

“Yeah,” Mike leaned forward and crouched, squinted at a mark on the wall. “Like this,” he touched it for a moment, brushing the tips of his fingers over it. “I put this here when I was seven. My roller-skates slid out from underneath me and I hit the porch pretty hard. One of the wheels whacked into the wall and this was left. I mean, it’s a small thing to be certain, but it’s…The house has changed owners. You would think that they would want to clean it up and repaint it and stuff.”

“You’d think,” Laughlin looked at one of the windows, frowning. “Does the view of the living room seem off to you?”

Mike turned to look as well. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Laughlin gestured. “The shadows aren’t right for the lighting; the back wall is too dark. The way it looks, the light should be coming from above us, not sunset lighting. And-“ he cut himself off, his eyebrows jerking up as he looked towards the top of the window. “- Or it could just be a gigantic photo slapped against the glass in hopes that no one would notice.”

“Wait, _what?_ ”

Laughlin leaned forward, tracing his fingers along the top of the window. “The image ends right here. Either the paper has shifted or it was never put quite right, but it isn’t flush with the edge.”

If he’d still had a gut to feel nervous with, Mike would have been feeling queasy. “Here,” he said quietly. “Let’s go around the back.”

Leading the way, Mike looked into every window. Now that he knew what he was looking for, he could spot the replacements. A photo instead of a view into a room. Every room looked like it was empty, lit like it was the middle of the day, and he felt cold for the first time in years. Something was wrong. Something about the house was disturbingly off, like a nightmare brought into the real world. “What…” he paused, Laughlin’s attention on him. “How many owners were there? For the original restaurant, I mean.”

“…Three,” Laughlin answered, keeping his voice down. “Mister Fazio, one of his friends, and someone I was never too sure about. His friend was Michelle’s half-sister’s father. He committed suicide after Michelle’s half-brother and one of her half-sister’s friends went missing. They were both stolen from the restaurant.”

“He was the one who made your original bodies, right?”

“Yeah,” Laughlin nodded, reaching out to help keep Mike upright when he nearly tripped over a root. “Charlie…Charlotte, I mean. Charlie’s named after her because that was the nickname she went by. Preferred it. I remember I…” he went quiet. “I killed the guy. Fastest runner and I was clear-headed for a little while. I got to him before the others really did, dragged him into the middle of the four of us. Two of the original owners died by suicide, one by animatronic.”

“Names?”

“Frederick Fazio, William Afton, and Michelle’s not-dad was named…Henry? I think?” Laughlin sighed. “Henry Dunwicke. Not related to Michelle, so she doesn’t have his last name. Charlie has his name, though. I have to wonder how she’s doing…”

“Yeah, you knew her,” Mike glanced up at another window, climbing the back porch.

The door was unlocked.

A shiver ran down Mike’s spine and if he could have felt frozen, he would have. There was dust in the windows in the back, the photos hanging in the even more askew than the front window one. Something had gone wrong in the house, he thought. He didn’t know what it could have been but he knew something had gone wrong.

“This is gettin’ creepier with every detail, Mike,” Laughlin reached to grab his arm, tugging gently at his sleeve.

Mike nodded. “But we need to know. We need to figure out what happened here. I think…I think this might be where it all started.”

“Dunwicke didn’t start working at the restaurant until nineteen-seventy. Afton came in to help Fazio about six years about it opened. Sixty-three, give or take a couple of months,” Laughlin frowned. “I’m not the one with the best memories of this, that’d be Freddy. Fazio killed himself in nineteen-ninety when he was sixty-one.” He halted again, then looked at Mike. “Three years after you and I met up-close for the first time.”

“Too many dead kids to his name, including two of his own, one of his friend’s, and a friend of Dunwicke’s daughter…” Mike looked up at the top of the door, noticing the lines of broken wires. “Fazio killed himself because his business was failing and because he couldn’t bear to be associated with so much death anymore.”

Laughlin nodded. “Probably should have been the final nail in the coffin for the business.”

“Yeah, we probably should have let it die,” Mike admitted, turning to face him. “But the people we’ve met and saved from them…I don’t regret that. Baby and Ballora and everyone. Everyone.”

“So,” Laughlin reached past him and pushed open the door. “Shall we find out where this leads?”

 

~

 

“He wanted us to know who he was,” Baby said softly.

Michelle looked up to meet her eyes, frowning. “What do you mean?” she adjusted the wires running into Baby’s body, watching the system scan from where she stood next to the girl. “Is it something you’re remembering?”

“Mister Afton,” Baby shook her head. “He wanted us to know who he was.”

With a sharp gasp, Michelle froze, her hand about to hit a key. “Afton?” she swallowed nervously. “Baby, what do you mean, ‘Afton’? I know the name, but I need you to tell me about why you know it.”

“Mister Afton,” Baby closed her eyes, covering them with her hands. “He made the originals. The bodies. Us. All of us.” Her shoulders were shaking and she seemed to be thinking, each word chosen carefully. “He wanted us to know, said it was important. And the other one didn't like him. His daughter survived but his son…Didn’t?” she uncovered her eyes, looking scared. “His son is dead. Dead. He didn’t- Someone did something. Something bad!”

On Michelle’s computer, Baby’s file scan came screeching to a halt, a warning about something trying to sneak in with the files.

Michelle took a step back, her hands twitching in midair as she tried to think around the problems. “Baby,” she said softly. “Calm down. First thing. Who did something, do you know?” she swallowed nervously. “Did my sister’s dad tell you?”

“Sister’s…”

“Charlie, Mister Dunwicke's daughter. She’s my half-sister,” Michelle swallowed, trying to keep from panicking. “Did he tell you who did the thing?”

“David…” Baby sounded drowsy, her head tilting at an angle that made Michelle nervous. Like a broken neck, like death had come for the being that looked like a little girl. “David killed him…David killed Sammy…Little Sammy…Killed him, know he did. Don’t have proof, know he did! Sammy disappeared from the restaurant, know he killed him, know he did!” She twitched, once, then twice, then a third time and finally snapped out of it. “How is she your sister?”

Michelle felt tears welling up in her eyes, her chest heaving a little. “When Sammy disappeared,” she began softly, her hands curling into shaky fists at her sides. “My mother was devastated. Sammy and Charlie were twins, closer than anything when they were little. My mother was married to their father, was their mother as well.” She cleared her throat, her next breath in a crumbling sort of calm. Things were going wrong and she didn’t know what to do. “When Sammy di-" she wiped at her eyes. “Disappeared…She left Charlie’s dad. Left Charlie with him. About two years later, she met my dad. About three years after that, I was born.”

“Half-sisters.”

“Yeah, but we don’t treat each other as anything less than sisters.” Michelle smiled at her, barely keeping herself upright. Her knees felt like they were liquid. “After Charlie nearly got killed and the animatronics saved her…” her eyes went unfocused for a moment. “That’s what she meant.” She whispered.

“What did she mean?”

“She meant that the animatronics were sentient,” Michelle turned to look at her computer. “They grabbed the guy who killed Sammy and then also tried to kill her. The first…” she lurched forward, opening a browser and typing quickly. “The first murders. The ones that were covered up. I found them when I took the drives from your restaurant,” she glanced over her shoulder at Baby. “Didn’t happen there but the knowledge was held there.”

Baby stayed silent for a moment and Michelle pulled back from her computer to look at her. “You’re older than you seem.” She said quietly.

“I think so,” Baby whispered back. “I didn’t remember.”

“Have you got a message from Mister Dunwicke?” Michelle felt her entire spine tense up. “Because I remember some pictures Charlie took of her bedroom from her childhood home. There was a little girl animatronic. Ella, I think she was called. She and Charlie had matching outfits.”

“I was supposed to be…” Baby’s eyes were the unfocused ones now, her hands clenching and unclenching. Michelle could see it, the possibility that Baby had once supposed to have been Ella. A sentient personality for the little girl that lived in Charlie’s closet. She had seen photos of her sister’s childhood room, had seen the inventions of Charlie’s father. The little girl who wore plaid and shiny leather shoes and her hair in perfect little pigtails on the sides of her head. “Supposed to be…Someone…”

Baby was Ella.

It made sense now. A little girl that was the same age as Charlie had been before her father’s suicide. Henry Dunwicke had loved his daughter, the entire house they lived in a monument to how much he adored her and tried to apologize for everything.

Michelle was only seven years younger than her sister, close enough in age to share some secrets and get some help from her. Not close enough to be close, really close, until they were adults. It had only been when Michelle had mentioned working for Fazbear’s that Charlie had really started speaking to her every few days instead of once a month. They didn’t speak all that much now, but it was still more than they had while growing up.

Her father had been the original creator of the animatronics. Of course she had been worried, her little sister had started working for the restaurant that had taken two members of the family away.

Charlie the cat, named after Henry Dunwicke's daughter.

Michelle covered her mouth, watching Baby. “I’m going to get Ballora in here,” she said quietly. “And then I need to look closely through your files. I think Henry Dunwicke might have left a message for his daughter in your files. I think you were supposed to be her companion and her best friend. Is that alright with you?”

“Yes,” Baby nodded slowly. “Because something is _wrong._ ”

 

~

 

The door pushed open slowly under Laughlin’s hands, the hinges shrieking in protest.

The gloom beyond the door almost had Mike backing away. It felt like a solid wall, something trying to keep him from moving forward. It looked like part of his childhood had been corrupted for just a moment.

And then he shook it off.

It was just a house, no matter how many bad memories were attached to it. No matter how many nightmares he’d had inside the walls, it was just a building. Walls and ceiling and floor. Constructed by humans and left to grow mold and mildew. “Is it just me,” Laughlin said softly. “Or is this place creepy?”

“It’s creepy,” Mike reassured him. “Even though I know the layout of this place, it feels like it’s a maze now. Guess childhood memories don’t really…Hold together.”

He paused, listening to how quiet the house was.

“Through everything I’ve been through, especially.” Mike continued after a moment, looking at the walls as they walked through the hallway. The door to his old room was partially open but he barely paid it any attention. The ceiling had wires strung along it and he spotted a camera that pointed down the other hallway. At the end was a chair he remembered his step-dad sitting in so many times. “They really did leave it pretty much the same as my parents had it when they sold it…” he muttered.

“What do ye mean?”

“That chair down there,” Mike pointed. “That was on one of the screens at Baby’s restaurant. My step-dad used to sit in it and read to me when I was fading in and out a lot.”

“Huh,” Laughlin peered through the shadows at it, pausing at Mike’s shoulder. “Didn’t you mention somethin’ about a stuffed toy he’d put on it to keep you company?” he frowned. “Or did that make it out of the house when yer parents moved?”

“I think the rabbit made it out,” Mike made a face, his eyebrows drawn down and his lips curling into a bit of a pout.

They started walking again and Mike reached out to take Laughlin’s hand, twining their fingers together. That was probably the only reason he stayed somewhat upright when his foot found a raised bump in the floor. “Yer okay, right?” Laughlin pulled him back up, blinking a couple of times. 

Mike didn’t answer right away, frowning as he looked at the ground. The carpet was in bad shape and it appeared to be a floorboard sticking up from the rest. “We should probably be a bit more careful, walking around in here,” he said quietly. “Let’s check the living room, that’s where the front door is.” He took a deep breath, letting it out slowly as they continued on.

Neither of them really heard the noises behind them.

The living room was dusty and there was a bank of computers along one wall, all of the screens blacked out and dead. The carpet was stained in large blotches and the light took a moment to get used to. Mike paused in the doorway and looked around, stopping in his tracks when he noticed something off.

The front door was locked from the inside. There was a heavy bar of metal fitted across it, keeping it from swinging open.

Below it was a streak of rust-red and Mike wanted to scream and run away. He knew that color, could suddenly recognize the scent in the air. It was the scent of death, musty and kept locked away for decades. Mike hadn’t been in his childhood home since he was sixteen, having moved into an apartment and started working whatever jobs he could to keep it. Fiercely independent after the accident that had nearly killed him, he had wanted whatever sort of life he could get on his own.

His parents had supported it.

They had moved away from the house around the same time.

None of them had wanted to stay, not in the house that carried so many reminders of how Mike probably should have been dead at the age of twelve.

They had sold the house, as-it-was, to the new owners and none of them had looked back. From the calendar on the wall, it would have been roughly a year after that that the people who were in the house had suffered.

At the end of the streak of blood on the door, like a gruesome sort of rainbow and pot of gold, was a skeleton. There were broken ribs and one of the arms was fractured, from what Mike could see. Like the person had died defending themselves against something with teeth.

Big teeth.

A giant spot on the carpet beneath the skeleton was more blood, Mike knew without even investigating closer. Whoever it had been had bled out, inches away from an escape that seemed to have been sealed off.

So close and so far.

The daylight let in around the photo of the living room probably had taunted them as they died.

“Mike?” Laughlin’s touch on his arm was gentle. Mike still startled at it, his internal fans whirring faster as he tried to stay calm. “Mike, we need to get out of here. We need to report this to someone,” he gestured at the skeleton, his eyes wide. “I saw a couple more of those when I checked down the hallway. There are at least three or four people who died here, Mike. We need to get out of here and-“

Something down the hallway creaked and both of them turned to look.

They saw a bulky figure, yellow fabric rotting off of it, holding up a platter. On the platter was something that might once have been a cupcake. It had eyes that shuttered open and Mike instinctively took a small step back. The figure lifted its head and stared at them, glowing red eyes unblinking.

“That looks like Chica,” Laughlin muttered.

“Run,” Mike whispered back.

“What?”

The Chica in front of them lifted its head a little higher and opened its mouth, letting out a bone-chilling scream. It seemed to rattle its frame, the cupcake bouncing dangerously close to the edge of the platter. It started moving towards them, picking up speed with every step.

Mike started pushing at Laughlin, managing to get him moving again. “Fucking RUN!”

Both of them took off as fast as they could, feet pounding against the floor. Behind them, the possibly-Chica was following as fast as it could, still screaming. “No no no no,” Mike could feel himself panicking, throwing his body around a corner and dragging Laughlin with him. His fiancé was still the fastest runner he knew, even in a humanoid body, but he was a close second.

They made it to the back door in seconds and Mike threw himself against it, hissing in frustration when it didn’t open.

“We literally just came through here,” Laughlin whispered. They seemed to have gotten Chica off their trail for the moment. They could still hear it screaming in the other part of the hallway. “The door is-“ he grabbed Mike and pulled him back. “Look. Like the front door. I think we triggered a security system.”

“Shit,” Mike covered his mouth with both hands. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Chica. Out the other eye, he saw a door.

He remembered that door.

Grabbing Laughlin’s hand, he twisted and started running again, kicking forward to get the door open faster. It rebounded off the frame and opened just enough for them to slip through. Mike turned and grabbed the handle, slamming it shut behind them, breathing heavily.

“That was…Too close,” he whispered, nearly pulling back from the door when Chica started slamming against it. “Nope. No. Nu-uh. Not this shit again.”

“Mike-”

“Go grab the second door,” Mike ordered quietly. “Make sure Chica can’t circle around and get in there. Please.”

He waited until he heard Laughlin’s steps retreat to the other side of the room. “You okay, lad?” Laughlin’s voice was trembling a little and Mike could tell he was just as freaked out. “I know this is your old home, but…”

“It’s not the house so much as it is the situation,” Mike turned to look at him, still pulling with all his strength to keep the door closed. “It’s…Too much like how it was. Back then. When I met you guys? There are nightmares popping up in my head right now and it’s not a good experience. I thought this was done. It was supposed to be over.” He closed his eyes. “I was supposed to be away from the nightmares of you guys possessed by angry ghost children and trying to kill me.”

Neither of them had time to say anything before more banging started up.

This time it was on the door Laughlin was holding closed and Mike opened his eyes to see the wood shaking in its frame. “Is this how we’re going to die?” he whispered.

“No,” Laughlin shook his head. “Mike, I know yer freaked out right now, but don’t even think that! We are not going to die here,” he curled his hand around the doorknob a little tighter, squaring up his shoulders. "We are not dying _here_ , not today, not ever!” he glanced around. “On my count, you need to hide under the bed. I’ll hide in the closet. Ready?”

“Mn-nm.”

“Mike, are ye ready?” Laughlin asked again. “Because we’ve got one shot at this. One,”

“No!”

“Two,”

The doors rattled, heavy thuds as two heavier bodies were thrown against them.

“ _THREE!”_

Laughlin and Mike launched themselves away from the doors and into the chosen hiding spots just before the doors flew open and admitted the robotic versions of their friends. There was no sentience to be found in the way they moved. Slow, heavy steps brought them into the room and Mike shrunk back under the bed, covering his mouth. Across the floor, he could see Laughlin tucking himself further into the shadows of the closet.

The metal feet stopped at the foot of the bed and Mike froze.

If his body had still been flesh and blood, his heart would have been hammering out of his chest. The orange feet of the scariest version of Chica he had ever seen shifted slightly and he curled his arms around his head, hoping it wouldn’t see him as a person. If it saw what looked like a pile of fabric, maybe it would leave him alone.

He felt like a scared child again, bed-bound by an injury, and he hated it.

Peeking out between his arms, Mike saw glowing red eyes and three rows of metal teeth. The bib it wore, the one that looked so much like the one he had become familiar with many years before, was in tatters, dangling precariously from its neck.

Its eyes shuttered and then it stood up.

Mike watched as it moved away, his arms pressing so hard against his face that he almost thought he was bending the internal supports. Across the floor, he could see Laughlin peeking out of the closet to watch him.

Behind his fiancé was a pair of bright red spots, getting closer and closer to where Laughlin sat.

 

~

 

“Brianna had a cousin,” Michelle explained to Ballora and Baby as she clicked around on her computer.

Ballora nodded, keeping Baby’s hand in both of her own. It was a small bit of comfort and they both seemed to actually find it helpful. “Oh?”

“Strangely enough, his name was Mike as well. After Brianna’s mom was retired from being Chica in a costume, she worked as a waitress in the original restaurant.” Michelle pulled her browser back up, clicking through the tabs and finding the report on the disappearance of Michael Logan. “When my half-sister, Charlie, went back into the old restaurant she had grown up near, she found his body. That adventure, that one night, led to the death of the third restaurant owner. Henry Dunwicke, Frederick Fazio, and a man I can’t really find any records of. He went by the name ‘Dave’ to get a job as a security officer. The plan was to use the building we didn’t work at and renovate it into a different thing inside a mall that was being built around it.”

“In what world does that seem like a good idea?” Ballora’s face twisted with angry confusion. “Whatever ghosts were inside of it would have-“

“I think that might have been the point.” Brianna’s voice entered the room before she did, holding a tablet with something on the screen. “The third owner went by a different name to get hired as security. What if he also did the same with a couple other jobs, just to make sure things happened the way he wanted them to?”

Michelle looked at her wife’s screen, then at her wife. “So he wanted the ghosts to be a problem.”

“Most serial killers take trophies,” Brianna said quietly. “What if his trophies were the ghosts of his victims? Most people don’t get the chance to deal in something like that, but if he knew, what else would he have set up?”

She tapped around on her screen for a moment. “And are you sure that Charlie’s dad killed himself?”

“…What?”

“The man who called himself ‘Dave’ was the third owner and the one who survived the business the longest. Fazio killed himself in nineteen-ninety. Business was drying up, we came along a couple years later…You were about eighteen when he killed himself. I was nineteen. Charlie’s dad killed himself when she was-“

“When she was seven, yeah,” Michelle narrowed her eyes at the screen. “He was the first owner to die.”

“Are we even sure that either of them killed themselves?” Brianna shook her head. “Both of them were found in their homes, alone. Fazio’s remaining daughter was living in her own place at the time because he was sixty-one. Denwicke's daughter was seven and out of the house, at school. Neither of them had people in the house with them.” She laughed a little, somewhat panicked. “Chelle, I don’t think…I’ve looked into it a little, Fazio didn’t have a history of anything really wrong with him. He just had some health problems that came with getting older.”

“Grief makes people do strange things,” Michelle shook her head.

“Yeah, and I don’t think grief would make someone suddenly kill themselves almost four decades later!” Brianna shot back, shaking her head. “None of this is adding up! Fazio had just…” she sighed, then closed her eyes for a moment. “Yes, his business was sort of falling apart when it came to the physical locations. But there were cartoons launching and a line of toys and games and a frozen foods line. It was still going strong enough to have those things.”

Michelle blinked, opened her mouth, then closed it again. “Holy shit.”

“Right?”

“Holy shit.”

Both of them looked at the tablet, then at the computer. “Baby?” Michelle sat back down in her chair, scrolling through the files. “I’m going to start opening some of these up, alright?”

“Yeah,” Baby nodded, leaning into Ballora’s side. Her own eyes were wide, having been listening in to Michelle and Brianna talking. “Mister Dunwicke never seemed like he was going to go away,” she said quietly. “He was always so nice and he promised me that he would make sure we were okay.” She giggled a little, smiling. “He…I remember him promising me that I would have a friend. He asked me to make sure she would always have a friend as well.”

“So, he made you himself,” Michelle looked at Baby for a long moment. “Do you know anything about the cameras in the back room from your restaurant?”

“They watched over a memory,” Baby nodded, twisting her hands together.

“A memory?”

“Of a nightmare.”

 

~

 

There was an odd serenity to seeing a disaster coming.

Mike watched the red spots growing closer and shifted under the bed, trying to catch Laughlin’s eye. He knew what the red was, even without knowing much else about what had been done to his childhood home in the time he had been gone. When Laughlin finally looked at him, he jerked his hand, motioning for him to move to one side.

If he could move before the eyes saw him, maybe he would be alright. If he couldn’t, it would be like watching the world’s biggest train come crashing and rolling off the tracks.

Laughlin nodded and pressed himself into the closet side, against the wall, then dropped into a ball. He was tucked into the corner as far as he could go and for a moment, he looked like a scared child. His knees were pulled to his chest and Mike wanted to be sitting with him. Wanted to be holding him and be held by him. What he wanted most of all was to be out of the nightmare house, away from every reminder of his childhood.

His foot brushed against something, a quiet clattering noise sounding through the room.

Thankfully it did not seem to have been heard by the animatronics. Probably because their version of Foxy had just arrived.

It popped out of the closet, brushing past Laughlin with a static-filled roar, ragged hands turning into metal claws that scraped against the floor. Numbing horror overtook Mike as he watched its snout smack against the end of the bed, shaking the frame above him. It seemed to be searching for him, pressing against his hiding spot and digging against the legs.

When he glanced around, he couldn’t see the others in the room anymore.

Mike turned back to look at Laughlin again, managing to catch a glimpse of his face twisted in terror before he met the eyes of Foxy. They were still glowing a bright red and from the way they were shuttering, it could see him. With its head lying flat on the floor, it looked vaguely like someone searching for a child in a game of hide-and-seek. For a moment he thought he heard something whirring and clicking in its throat, like a voice trying to be heard.

Something grabbed hold of his leg and dragged him out from underneath the bed. Mike scrambled as he was pulled into the air and managed to grab hold of what his leg had clattered against earlier: the baseball bat he had seen in the video from the restaurant. His name, written in his handwriting, childish with a backward e, a preserved memory from decades before. He was turned, still upside-down, to face the being holding him.

Freddy.

It was a far cry from the version he had become friends with, even when accounting for the animatronic body Freddy had started out in. There were teeth in the region of the stomach, sharp fangs that looked good for gnashing and breaking.

With a gulp, Mike tilted his head to look at its face.

The eyes were glowing orange, not a single trace of sentience. He tightened his grip on the baseball bat and prepared to have to take a swing. Laughlin was in the closet still, looking like he was ready to speed out and attack to keep Mike safe.

There was an antenna sticking out of the back of Foxy’s head.

A clicking noise caught Mike’s attention. “Confirmed,” came a voice from Freddy. “Inorganic. Human-shaped entity. Spectral elements recognized.” The speakers clicked off and Mike was lowered to the bed. When he was upright again, Mike could see an antenna coming out of Freddy’s head as well.

Some sort of communication system between all of them?

“Can you hear me?” he asked, still holding the baseball bat tightly.

Freddy turned back to look at him. The clicking noise again. “Vocalization recognized. Speech pattern: human. Adult. Modified or recorded.”

“Can you answer questions?” Mike tried again, leaning forward. Freddy’s stomach opened slightly, the teeth coming apart from each other a fraction. “Can you answer a unique question? If I asked you what day it was, could you tell me?” he turned to look at Foxy, still at the foot of the bed and watching him closely. “Can you hear me?”

“Current date is- is- is-” Freddy stuttered, the lights in its eyes turning white for a moment. Its head drooped down, whirring into silence.

“…Guess not,” Mike stood up, watching both animatronics carefully as he skirted around them towards Laughlin. “I think they’re a security system,” he said quietly, wrapping both of his hands around his fiancé’s. “Built in the way they tried to make the Funtimes; non-sentient and obedient. But these guys look older than those ones. Test runs?” he squinted at Foxy, feeling Laughlin press closer to him and hold him tightly.

“Lad,” Laughlin laughed a little. “We need to get out of this house.” He shook his head when Mike looked at him. “We found out some of what they were doing here, we need-”

“I can hear you.”

Both of them tensed up, eyes wide. As one, Mike and Laughlin turned to look at Freddy. Its mouth wasn’t moving, its eyes glowing white again. Steady this time, like the settings had been switched. “I…What was that?” Laughlin spoke first, moving his hands like he was preparing to shove Mike behind him and towards the door.

“I can.” It wasn’t the same voice as before, but it sounded familiar in a way. It took Mike a moment, but he realized why.

The voice sounded like Harvey had, all those years ago, when he was leaving his post-death message on the machine. The same tinny quality to it, the same hoarse undertones, the same state of shock. “Did you die here?” Mike asked, leaning closer. “Are you one of the skeletons out there?”

“I was.” The voice answered him, Freddy’s head turning. “You’re a spectral element attached to an inorganic body.”

“…Are ye a ghost?” Laughlin stared at the animatronics.

A bitter laugh echoed through the room for a moment. “I think so. I think they did to us what was done to a couple of our coworkers, ages and ages ago. We were set up to try and create a security program. We were told it was to ensure the safety of the children going into the restaurants.”

“How so?” Mike and Laughlin looked at each other for a moment, smiling. They had asked the question at the same time.

Freddy wasn’t moving.

It seemed more like he was being used as a conduit for the ghost rather than truly being possessed. “Our job was to program in recognition of specific behaviors. If an adult showed sign of those behaviors, the animatronics would go into a defense mode and gather the children around them while also sending data back to the computers to tell the security team which adult was misbehaving. We were tasked with, we were told, testing those features in a secure environment.”

It clicked for Mike, suddenly.

“This house.”

“Yes.” The voice sounded hollow for a moment, like someone speaking from the bottom of a well. “It has hallways like the restaurant has. Suitable for navigational systems to practice in.”

“So, what happened to ye?” Laughlin blinked a couple of times. “And what happened to the coworkers you mentioned?”

“We found evidence that they had been murdered in controlled conditions and their ghosts latched onto the circuitry of some of the original animatronics.” Freddy’s head twitched, his stomach-mouth going lax and gaping open into a dangerous-looking maw. “I have seen the designs for the circuits myself. Designed, supposedly, to bind the ghosts into the machines. I never was one for believing in the supernatural, but I guess I have no choice now.”

“…Which animatronics?” Mike could feel panic rising within him. “And how many coworkers?”

“The notes we found said that there had been twenty-two tests. Of those, only two had been successful.” A pause, a static crackle, a soft moaning noise that sounded like someone in pain. “Foxy and one of the Springlock series. Maybe both Foxy? I don’t…I don’t remember anymore. Remembering gets so hard.” Freddy’s head twitched again. “I don’t remember my wife’s face anymore. I think we had a…Child.”

The voice suddenly sounded exhausted.

“How many of you were in the house?” It was a desperate question and Mike knew it, even as he asked it. “How many bodies are we looking for? And why are you all bodies, not living people?”

“There were seven of us…We were locked in…”

“Do you know why?”

“Doors shut. Told us we could come out if we never spoke of what he’d had us do.” The voice was growing weaker. “He murdered people to get what he wanted…Wanted the children. Admitted he liked their fear. Liked their little bodies…”

“Who?” Laughlin cut across Mike before he could speak next, his eyes wide with shock. “Can you tell us _who?_ ”

“Briggs…Lawrence Briggs…” Freddy’s head twitched again. “Third owner. Killed the other two. They were part of the experiments.” There was a pause before the voice spoke again. “Tired…So tired…Miss my wife…Can I rest now…”

“You can rest,” Mike whispered, feeling sick.

The white lights in Freddy’s eyes died out slowly. After a moment, there was the imprint of an adult-shaped body on the bed, pressing into the covers and the pillow. Freddy stayed still, eyes dark in a way that seemed permanent, like a fading guardian of the dead. The fabric on its body was worn through in places but it was easy to see how it had once been a vibrantly colored children’s companion.

Mike looked at the version of Foxy at the foot of the bed and sighed.

Its lights were out too.

“Whatever happened here, I think it’s over now,” Mike said quietly, looking around the room. He still had his old baseball bat in his hand. On the shelves were old toys of his as well and he shook his head at them. He put the baseball bat on the shelf with the rest of them. “I think this part of the past should stay as part of the past.”

“You’re probably right,” Laughlin took his free hand, twining their fingers together. “…I have some questions. To ask Michelle. When we get home, that is.”

“I would bet, yeah,” Mike looked at him. “Apparently, you’re like me.”

“Apparently.”

They wandered out of the room, nearly smacking into Bonnie and Chica. The two had powered down in the hallway, frozen in place.

“It does explain some things,” Laughlin said after a few minutes of working their way out around the animatronics. “My programming always did go…Weirder than everyone else’s. Like there was something not-quite-right. Like…” his gaze was unfocused, not quite seeing whatever he was looking at in his memories. “Like I wasn’t made the same. Figured it was just more bugs in the system.” He shrugged, still not focusing. “Figured I was just defective.”

“Do you have any memories of it?”

“Of it?” Laughlin looked up at him, eyes wide as he tried to parse meaning from the question. “You mean before?”

“Yeah.”

“…I think that’s why I chose my name.” Laughlin’s mouth was hanging open for a second. “I think it was mine before. Back then. I don’t remember anything but the restaurant from back then. I think…I think I must have worked for them.”

Mike took his hand in both of his own. “We can have Michelle look through the records.”

“Yeah,” Laughlin nodded slowly. “Yeah.”

They made it to the front door, still barred, and Mike looked at the computers. “One second,” he muttered, making his way over to them and jiggling a mouse. Surprisingly, it turned on. “Still running,” he laughed a little, finding the screen on a desktop. There were very few programs on it, which made it easy to find what he was looking for.

Security system.

He clicked it and the label on the screen switched to saying, ‘Off’. Which a creak of metal, the bar on the door pulled back into the wall.

Open at last.

“Here we go,” Mike took Laughlin’s hand again and led him out into the fresh air, settling him on the porch. “Just…Take a minute. Breathe.”

“I didn’t know,” Laughlin stared off into the distance again. His hair, pulled back into a ponytail, was the same bright red color it had always been. His skin was the same, with the freckles he had asked Michelle to give him. With his shoulders slumped and his eyes once-more unfocused, he looked smaller somehow. As if the revelation of his once-living status had rendered him into a frightened teenager.

Mike leaned against his side, still holding his hand. “We’ll figure it out.”

“Freddy always said I was the one with the best grasp on how humans felt emotions,” came the injured hiss of words from his fiancé. “Couldn’t explain it, couldn’t understand it. We all just knew that if a kid was scared, I was the best one to talk to them. Could explain how to work out their anger without hurting anyone. Could-” he looked at Mike in a sideways sort of manner. “Could fall in love with a living human.”

“When you fell on me, in animatronic form,” Mike swallowed nervously, squeezing his hand for a moment as if to reassure him. “You were apologizing. To me, you sounded like you were terrified and angry and worried, all at once. The others, my mom told me, had been worried, but were more concerned with keeping everyone back and getting medical attention on me.”

“Of course I was apologizin’!” Laughlin whipped his head around to look at Mike, his free hand coming up to push his hair back and look at the spot that had once been broken open. That had once had scars across the skin. “I had hurt ye so badly I thought you were dying. You _were_ dying. Diana was the reason you got back into your body. The only reason.” His thumb traced over Mike’s forehead as if to remind himself that the damage wasn’t there anymore. “…I want to talk to Michelle about this.”

“We will,” Mike nodded. “We also need to call the police and get this place torn apart to find the other bodies.”

“…Doesn’t that just feel familiar.”

Mike stood up first, tugging Laughlin to his feet by their still-joined hands. “Yeah. The past finds ways to come after us, again and again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I changed the number of chapters. There is going to be an epilogue because this chapter is nearly 8,000 words as it is.


	12. Nothing Remains

“Laughlin Murphy,” Michelle read off the screen. “Disappeared in nineteen-sixty-nine. He was twenty-five years old. Everyone who knew him assumed he had cut off all ties and run away.”

Another click, a double tap.

“This is the photo I took of the circuitry that was inside the animatronic body you were inside of,” she looked at Laughlin, swallowing her nerves as she did. “It was on the hard drive that Golden Freddy grabbed. The hard drive that Fred grabbed. When the original restaurant was burning. I’d kept photos and notes just in case, I didn’t know if we’d need them or not.”

She pointed to the circuits on the screen.

“These elements look similar to the mark inside of Mike’s arm. And,” she paused, changing windows on her computer again, minimizing the photo of the circuits. “This was what Laughlin Murphy looked like.”

Mike gasped quietly, his jaw dropping a fraction as he stared.

The man in the photograph was dressed in a kitchen staff uniform. The somewhat baggy shirt that stated the restaurant’s name did little to hide the shape of him, tall and thin and sharp, angles even where he was soft. The eyes that stared out from the moment frozen in time were achingly familiar, the hair pulled back into a ponytail much the same. “Laughlin?” Michelle spoke up, looking at the two of them.

“Yeah?” Laughlin looked at her, having trouble turning away from the screen.

“You were the one who asked for how you looked,” she blinked a couple of times. “What colors everything was. Red hair, gold eyes, freckles…You have tan lines. You asked for them. The others just wanted to look like themselves, or at the very least a version of themselves that they could recognize. The color of the Foxy animatronic…Given the time and what we now know, I think the coloring was based off of you. Human you.”

Laughlin nodded slowly, a look of sick horror on his face. “Freddy always said I acted like I knew how things were from a human experience. I acted more like a human than the rest.”

“Did you ever even expect something like this?”

“Lass, how in the hell do you expect something like this?” Laughlin waved a hand at the screen. “I had a name. I had a body, one made of flesh and blood and bone.” His chest rose sharply, like he was suddenly remembering to breathe in. It might have been the echo of his last breath, pointed and aching in him like the ghost it was. “I had a life. I had a birthday.”

He sighed, covering his face with his hands. “What do I even do with this information?”

“Well,” Michelle turned to face her computer again. “Because you were never reported dead, you have a social number. You can legally apply for things in your name.”

“And you’re thirty-one years older than me,” Mike said it quietly, just loud enough for Laughlin to hear.

Laughlin burst out laughing, his face still hidden by his hands. He fell sideways into Mike’s shoulder, wrapping his arms around him. “Oh god, I’m a cradle robber.”

“Didn’t we know that already?”

More laughter shook Laughlin’s body as he nodded, pressing his forehead against Mike’s shoulder. “We did, yeah, just a little.” He snorted, then dropped into silence. “Are we…Am…Are we going to be okay?” he was shaking as he asked, his voice softer than Mike had ever heard it before. “I’m not what we thought I was.”

“Hey,” Mike shot a glance at Michelle. She nodded and got up, leaving the room. “Hey, Laughlin, look at me.” He nudged a hand under his fiancé’s chin, guiding him up to meet his eyes. “You are exactly what I thought you were.”

“…What?”

“I thought you were the guy who was so ridiculous and headstrong he was going to marry me no matter what anyone had to say about it,” Mike held up his left hand, using his thumb to twist his engagement ring. “I thought you were the guy who loved me so much he decided to come investigate my childhood home and make sure I was safe in it, no matter what was inside. I thought you were the guy who was a little bit ridiculous but ultimately one of the kindest people I know, even if he is a little bit rough around the edges.” He put his palms on Laughlin’s cheeks. “You are _exactly_ the person I thought you were.”

“Pfft,” Laughlin closed his eyes halfway, curling his hands around Mike’s wrists. “No human can tell me what to do about marriage. I said it before, I don’t need a piece of paper telling me I have permission to marry you. And- And your old home…Given our track record, it was going to be dangerous.” He shrugged, still looking only at Mike. “And being kind is one of the only ways to survive what we went through. If I hadn’t been kind, I probably would’a been dismantled.”

“So, you are exactly the man I thought you were,” Mike nodded. “Could have turned cold when you were abandoned inside a part of the restaurant. Or even before that, when your stage was cut apart and blocked off and you were given an eight-foot-by-ten-foot stage and told that was it. That was all you got.”

“Could have.” Laughlin peered out at him from underneath his eyelashes. “Didn’t.”

“Precisely,” Mike leaned in and pressed their foreheads together. “I should probably have realized it earlier, actually.”

“Why?”

“Because. Every version of Chica that we meet is roughly the same, personality-wise.” He chuckled. “Every version of Freddy, every version of Bonnie…Most of them are the same. They act like they could be the same people, just given a different environment. True mechanical sentience. But you?” he shook his head gently, feeling their noses rub together a little, and he smiled. “Reyna and you are so different. You and Moxie. You and Archibald. Those three act the same. Like female and male versions of each other. You’re the odd one out, in a way.”

Mike paused, then jerked back, his eyes wide. “I know who the other successful mechanical ghost is.”

 

~

 

Brianna glanced between her wife and the new arrival, stepping back from the door she had opened.

“Hello Charlie,” she smiled, raising her voice just enough for Michelle to hear her. “How are you doing today?”

“Pretty good,” Charlie laughed a little, still freckled and brown-haired as ever. The lines around her eyes and at the corners of her mouth had gotten a little deeper since the last time Brianna had seen her in person, but she still looked like herself. Given what had happened since then, Brianna was a little surprised that her own reflection still looked the same. “Michelle?” Charlie called out, stomping her boots on the doormat to get the dirt off of them before entering the house.

Her half-sister tilted her head up but still did not look up from her laptop. “Yeah?”

Brianna covered her mouth with one hand and closed the door with the other. “Chelle,” she laughed a little. “Look up for a moment.”

“Sorry, the research on this is _interesting,_ ” Michelle finally dragged her eyes away from her computer and sighed. “What did you need, honey?” she glanced around, then caught sight of her sister. “ _Charlie!”_ she stood up and set her laptop to the side, offering her half-sister a hug. “Oh my god, is it good to see you.”

“You too, little sister,” Charlie tucked her chin into Michelle’s shoulder and held onto her. “I got your message while out on a hike with my husband. You sounded upset and worried, so I got over here as fast as I could.”

“We…” Michelle stepped back, her hands still on Charlie’s shoulders. “There is some stuff. We have been finding out more about Fazbear entertainment and the history of what happened with it. Including,” she took a deep breath, then nudged her sister to sit down on the couch she had vacated. “Including some things about your dad.”

“My dad?” Charlie’s eyes got big, her mouth dropping open a fraction. “What do you mean?”

Clearing her throat, Brianna grabbed the files they had arranged for Charlie to look at and held them up. “We scoured deep, dug through every archive we could gain access to legally and then some we had to work our way into. Found every file buried, ever, by a man named William Afton. Otherwise known as David. We found out his real name, or as close to it as we are probably ever going to find. The first ever mention of him is under the name Lawrence Briggs,” Brianna cleared her throat again, awkwardly, then handed over the papers. “He, whatever his name was, was experimenting with ghosts.”

Charlie frowned, flipping open the top file. “What does that have to do with my father?”

“Charlie,” Michelle sat next to her, hesitant. “There is some… _Very_ convincing evidence that your father didn’t kill himself.”

Running footsteps interrupted before Charlie had a chance to react to that.

Laughlin and Mike burst into the room together, both of them wearing just about the same expression of concern, excitement, and terror. “Michelle,” Mike spoke first. “I think I figured out which animatronic is the second ghost-in-an-animatronic-shell.”

“Which one?” Michelle stood up again, her eyes wide. Charlie nodded when she looked back to confirm that it was okay to leave her to think. “Which one do you think it is?”

“The ones that break the pattern,” Laughlin took a deep breath, very visibly trying to calm himself. Brianna caught Michelle’s eye and frowned. “I broke the pattern. The others all act the same, just with different environmental factors and gender-identifications. I act, always have, probably always will, more like a human than the others. Freddy pointed that out. A _lot_.”

“So,” Mike nodded, taking his fiancé’s hand in his own and twisting their fingers together. “Who else breaks the pattern?”

Brianna thought about it for a moment, then frowned as she thought some more. Which of the ones they had rescued had broken a behavioral pattern?

For a moment, it was just a confusing thought, spiraling around and around in her head. Once she actually started thinking it over, however, it came to her quickly enough. “Edmund,” she said before Michelle could even think to answer. “Edmund breaks the behavioral patterns for the Chica series. Only one to be male.”

“Right,” Mike nodded. “I think Edmund is the other successful ghost bound to a solid form.”

“Doesn’t make his gender any less real,” Michelle muttered. “I mean, the first version of Bonnie is neutral. Edmund could just be like them.”

“Yeah, he could,” Laughlin pursed his lips. “But ye gotta admit, lass, Edmund is the only variable ye can add to the equation and have it make sense. Like solvin’ fer X, only really one answer that fits.” He closed his eyes for a moment, then nodded. “Edmund is the only answer that makes any sort a’ sense.” He opened his eyes again and turned his head when Charlie shifted in her seat to look at the commotion.

Laughlin froze.

For a moment, Brianna remembered the story Charlie had relayed when asked about her involvement in the death of the third owner. Charlie had been backed into a corner and nearly killed, only for the animatronics to save her at the last minute.

Foxy had stepped forward to drag the man off.

“You’re okay,” Laughlin said, his voice full of wonder. “I mean…I knew that ye were Michelle’s sister, so ye had to be okay in some regard, but I just,” he paused, then shook his head. “Sorry, probably sound insane, bursting in here with talk of ghosts and the like. You’re Charlie.”

“I am, yes,” Charlie turned so that she was facing him over the back of the couch, the files next to Michelle’s laptop. “You sound like you’re heavily involved in the things my little sister is doing with her life.”

“I am,” Laughlin stepped forward, then held out his hand. “Laughlin.”

“And you know who I am,” Charlie shook it firmly, still wearing a confused smile. “Though I don’t know who you are, besides a name. I must admit, however, that you seem familiar.”

“Ah,” Laughlin winced and dropped her hand. “Don’t know how much you know. What I have to say will _absolutely_ sound insane.” He laughed a little and shrugged when she raised an eyebrow. “Trust me on that one. We have gone through some _things_. Don’t know how we made it through in one piece, but I am so glad we have. In better condition than we started in, actually.”

Michelle stepped back in, at that moment.

“You remember how I told you that the animatronics were sentient?” Michelle asked her sister in a quiet voice.

“Yes?” Charlie looked at Michelle, a frown on her face.

“This man was Foxy,” Michelle looked between the two of them and Brianna wanted to laugh. Decades had passed, and Michelle was still just as blunt as ever, sometimes. “So I imagine that it’s a bit of a relief, for him, to know that you’re okay.”

Charlie turned back to Laughlin and seemed to size him up for a second before she nodded. “Okay.” She stood up and circled around the couch, dragging Laughlin into a tight hug. “Thank you,” she whispered. “You scared the hell out of me, sometimes, but you saved our lives in the end.” She paused, then pulled away. “Wait, you were saying something about a successful ghost-in-an-animatronic?” she looked up, meeting his eyes. “A second one?”

With a nervous laugh, Laughlin leaned back on his heels, clasping his hands behind his back. “Well, y’see,” he grinned a little, trying to cover up the panic in his eyes that Brianna could see.

“Someone was doing some testing,” Mike came over to back up his fiancé, taking one of his hands. “The jackass who tried to kill you arranged to ruin a lot of people.”

“The guy who seems to have killed not only your father,” Michelle raised a hand. “But Fazio, as well. William Afton, David, Lawrence Briggs…Whatever his name was. You would think his influence would end with his life, that his terror would stop when he did.” She shrugged a shoulder and Brianna crossed the room to put her arms around her wife. “But he just keeps coming out with surprises for us.”

Charlie blinked a couple of times, processing the new information, then nodded. “…Somehow, I’m not surprised. After what I went through, after the man was smart enough to be able to hide in the restaurant and get a job as a security guard and have no one recognize him…”

“Not surprised at all,” Mike grinned. “I am almost considering getting that _tattooed_ at this point.”

“Mm,” Charlie turned to him and held out a hand. “Charlie Dunwicke, by the way.”

“Mike Schmidt,” Mike took her hand and shook it.

When Charlie stared at him, studying his face in shock, he grinned. “Yeah, a couple people out there who know of me but don’t know me still have that reaction. I should be going gray by now.”

“You were born in the seventies,” Charlie pointed out. “I remember Michelle telling me about her coworker named Mike, about the same age as her. You just…Startle me, is all.” She released his hand and looked at her sister. “So the animatronics are sentient robotic configurations and then we’ve got two that are ghosts bound to bodies?”

“Three,” Mike raised a hand. “Laughlin, myself, and we’re both pretty sure that Edmund is the third of our kind.”

“…Can you show me?” Charlie pressed her lips together. “I want to know _everything._ ”

 

~

 

Edmund, when they found him, was sitting with Archibald.

The remaining animatronics were gathered together, still looking through the computer systems Michelle had set them up on. Pictures of facial features, body parts, colors, hair, teeth…She had set them up to try and figure out what bodies they wanted to have. Bonnefeld and Fred were sitting with the two others from their set, chatting amiably with them.

Michelle almost wanted to laugh at how peaceful the scene was.

“So we’ve got Archibald,” she told Charlie, watching as he raised an arm in greeting. “Edmund,” Archibald’s hand moved to point. “And then we’ve got Bonnefeld and Fred.” The two androids waved, turning to smile at them. “They’re the-”

“The Springlocks,” Charlie blinked a couple of times, then moved forward to inspect them. “I remember them. Are you…” she turned to look at Bonnefeld. “That was the name on the poster. I could never really remember that part.”

“Oh,” Bonnefeld looked at her, frowning. “I think I remember you.”

They stared at each other for a second before Bonnefeld’s eyes went wide and he shrunk back. “Oh god,” he whispered, a look of horror on his face. Fred braced himself at Bonnefeld’s back, curling his arms around the smaller android. “I do. I _do_ remember you.”

“You were the Springlock that he wore,” Charlie said quietly. “When he took my brother. When he took _my_ friend Mike away. You were the one forced to behave like that.”

“I was,” Bonnefeld nodded. “I am so sorry.”

“Not your fault,” Charlie shook her head, her eyes suspiciously watery in a way that made Michelle want to comfort her sister. “Not your fault at all. You probably couldn’t act unless you were out of wearable mode and he was inside you with everything locked in place and out of the way.”

She smiled at him, then turned to Archibald and Edmund. “Hello,” she offered cautiously. The two of them pushed the tablet they were looking at aside and looked up at her. “My name is Charlie. It’s good to meet you outside of the nightmare we all went through.”

“Charlie?” Edmund’s head tilted to one side. “C-Charlie?”

Charlie turned to him and smiled. “You might have met my father, actually. Henry Dunwicke.”

“Met,” Edmund seemed to turn the word over in his mouth for a moment and Michelle felt something twist in her gut. It was the feeling she always got when something was about to change, something very important.

“Edmund?” she said quietly.

“Met Henry Dunwicke,” Edmund rasped the words out, even the improved processor Michelle had added having trouble. Like something was interfering it. “Hard not to meet your own reflection in the mirror. Charlie,” his head twitched, and he stared at the floor. “Had a daughter named Charlie. Memory isn’t clear, don’t remember everything…Remember Charlie.” He looked up, eyes shifting. “Remember Charlie.”

Charlie, for her part in things, looked a little horrified. “What- What was her full name?”

“Charlotte Abigail Dunwicke,” Edmund made a noise that could have been a giggle. “N-named two after her. Abbie the Cow and Charlie the Cat. Built sentience in…” he trailed off, gave a bodily twitch, then turned to Archibald. “Sorry, were you saying something?”

Michelle could feel her own jaw hanging open and a quick glance around the room told her that everyone else was in the same state of shock. “So, Mike,” she managed after a minute. “Guess you were right.”

Mike turned to look at her. “… _Yeah._ ”

Archibald patted Edmund’s head. “This is me best friend,” he said, his voice a deep growl, even when he was being quiet. “He has done that fer _years_. Just about since we woke up. Been worryin’ about it ever since.”

Charlie moved to kneel in front of Edmund. “Dad?”

Edmund jerked again, facing her, then tilted his head. “Charlie?”

With a shaking hand, Charlie reached out to trace the shape of Edmund’s face, pausing to ruffle the feathers at the top of his head. “Dad.” She took a deep breath, her eyes wide as she looked up at him. “ _Dad._ ”

Edmund looked at her and seemed to smile a little. “Charlie.”

With a sigh, Charlie hugged him, her eyes closing. “You should be in your seventies, now. Most people are _losing_ their parents by my age, not finding them again.” She pulled back and rubbed the back of her hand over her eyes, swiping away the tears that had started falling. “Do you know why you keep going from remembering to not?”

“The sentience is fighting,” Edmund-Henry answered her. “His name is Edmund, he’s still who he was thought to be. I’m just hitching a ride.” He turned to Archibald. “Don’t worry, he’s just as fond of you as he ever was.”

He turned back to Charlie. “We’ve been in the same head for an age,” he said quietly. “We’re still trying to figure out how to make things work together. He wants to be in control but so do I but he has more reason for it.” Henry stared at his daughter, something a little like wonder in the animatronic eyes. “You grew up so well,” he said softly. “I was afraid that something was going to happen to you, that you wouldn’t make it.”

“Almost didn’t,” Charlie wiped at her face again. “But I’m still here.”

“Is William Afton still around?” Henry’s voice turned cold for a second. “He and I need to have some _words_.”

Michelle laughed a little. “Would those words include a fist to the face?”

“ _Yes._ ”

“You’re a little late on that front,” Laughlin grinned dangerously. “Killed him already.”

“Okay then,” Henry reared back in surprise. “As long as he is not around to threaten anyone else.” He turned to Michelle. “Edmund knows you, you introduced yourself to him, but I am afraid I do not…Know.”

Michelle stepped closer, glancing at Charlie for a moment and feeling a ball of worry settle in her stomach. “My name is Michelle Kerry. I’m one of the ones helping to restore bodies and give new life to the sentient animatronics that were mistreated by the Fazbear corporation. Your designs were brilliant, by the way. Make them look how the restaurant wanted them to look but also sneak in a sentience.” She looked up when Charlie cleared her throat. “I am also, uh,” she coughed, awkwardly, into her fist. “Charlie’s half-sister.”

“You’re Margaret’s daughter,” Henry said after a moment.

“Yeah.”

Henry reached up and put his hands on Michelle’s shoulders. “I am so glad she found a way to be happy again, after everything that happened. Is she still alive?”

“Yeah,” Michelle smiled at him. “She’s in her seventies now, so is my dad. My dad actually is the reason I was able to create the new bodies for these guys.” She gestured at Fred and Bonnefeld. “He created and patented a type of fake skin, intending on having it be able to replace skin grafts. It moves and reacts like real skin,” she laughed a little. “When I found out they were sentient and that leaving them in their old bodies would put them at risk, I asked my dad about the skin stuff and told him a bit about what was happening. He then funded my building and gave me the supplies and stuff.”

“So you built them from scratch?”

“With their input,” Michelle nodded. “It was important to me that they had a hand in how they looked.”

Henry hummed a little and nodded. “Like you are having Edmund and Archibald do.”

“Yes,” Michelle nodded again, feeling the worry in her chest dissipate. “Seems important – Have everyone choose how they look.”

“Do you need someone to help with that?”

For a second, it was like they were standing on a precipice. Or maybe just at a crossroads. What she said next would change the way everything happened after, would inform the way their future would unfold. Henry seemed to understand that as well. Michelle lifted her head and stood up straight. “I would like that very much,” she smiled at him. “But we’ll have to get you your own body again. Once Edmund and Archibald have chosen, make another form and I’ll see that it gets made.”

If Henry’s laughter was anything to go by, she had said the right thing.

At her side, Charlie laughed as well, slinging an arm around Michelle’s shoulders. “Well,” she said. “Looks like our lives are always going to be interesting.”

“At least we’re never bored.” Brianna added in.

 

~

 

Mike nudged Laughlin against the wall, smiling at the laughter they both heard from the other room.

“Lookit that,” Laughlin muttered. “Everyone’s happy. Including us,” he rested his hand on Mike’s cheek. “Right?” golden eyes studied Mike’s face for a moment. “I mean, I’m a little panicked, still, but we’re figuring that out. Are you happy?”

With a nod, Mike leaned in until he was pressed against Laughlin’s chest, holding him like his life depended on it. “Everyone is happy,” he echoed. “We’re all safe. There might be more like us out in the world, but for now, we’ve got an enormous family.” His hands moved to Laughlin’s back, his fingers curled in the fabric of the other’s shirt. “We’ve got each other.”

“We always will have that last part,” Laughlin muttered. “I’ll make damn sure of it.”

“Laughlin Murphy,” Mike laughed a little, shaking his head. “You’re so strange, sometimes. Strength of conviction, at least.”

“So if I promise you that you will never be alone?” Laughlin turned his face so that it was hidden in Mike’s hair. One of his hands was cupped around the back of Mike’s head. “Would that change your description of me?”

“No,” Mike tucked one of his hands into the back pocket of Laughlin’s pants. “But it would just further convince me that you are _exactly_ who I thought you were.” They moved closer to each other, until no space remained between them. “You are just the man I thought you were. I mean, it’s a surprise that you’re like me, but in the end, I guess I always kind of knew.”

“What, not into androids?”

“Well, I suppose I could love an android if the person they were was someone I wanted to love,” Mike shrugged. “But you’ve always drawn me in. Even when you were an animatronic fox, I still liked being around you. You were interesting.”

“And now the show is over,” Laughlin took a deep breath, then released it slowly. “The bodies have all, as far as we know, been found. The murderers have been charged. The murdered have, we hope, found peace.” He gestured at the room they had come from. “Michelle and Charlie have each other and Edmund and Henry seem like they’ll each get their own body.”

“If Michelle has any say, yes they will.”

“We’ve got people in our corner, which is a damn big difference from where we were, just a couple of decades ago,” Laughlin stroked Mike’s hair, fluffing it up before brushing it down again. “Our lives are finally okay.”

“Yeah,” Mike shifted just enough to be able to look up at his fiancé. “We’ve got your birth certificate and social security card, by the way. One of the things Michelle managed to find while researching.”

“Oh, so we’ve got proof of me being a living person,” Laughlin barked out a laugh. “Alright.”

“Helps with acquiring a marriage license,” Mike shrugged.

“You’re sure you still want to marry me?” Laughlin swept his thumbs over the apples of Mike’s cheeks. “You know how weird I am. I could be a nightmare to be-”

Mike cut him off by surging up and kissing him.

They were going to be okay, every last one of them. They had friends and they had a family. They were going to be okay.

For the first time in his entire existence, Mike Schmidt felt at peace.

 

~

 

In the year 2020, Fazbear entertainment and affiliates was disbanded for good. The entire corporation dismantled, the assets liquidated.

Any remaining animatronics were handed off to a woman named Michelle Kerry-Bradect. The android population grew steadily under her guidance. Eventually, growing older, she opened a school that taught the willing how to operate on, and fix, any of the androids she had built.

The victims of the various murderers were given proper burials, ordered by the court. Paid for by what remained of the Fazbear corporation. In some cases, there was no body to be found.

In others, there was DNA testing done on previously unidentified bodies and the missing were finally put to rest.

An entire cemetery had to be built to hold the victims.

With the rise in androids, policies are put into place to protect their rights. At the head of the party, there were two cyborgs – a married couple – and a woman who gave her name as Bethany, when asked. She had a dancer’s build and a little girl with red hair that stayed, constantly, at her side. Her sister, she told those who tried to pry. They were both very tired, but the fight needed to be fought.

The androids won, laws were placed to keep them from being abused. Civil rights were fought for and gained.

So this is the end of that story.

It is never the end of the entire story – That goes ever on and on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it, folks. This series is officially over. I think I've said that before, actually.
> 
> If you have stuck with me through three years of inconsistent updates and panic attacks and story that seems weird, I am so glad. I know this AU isn't exactly everyone's cup of tea. I know some of it probably was not considered any sort of good by some people.   
> I know I was petty and made a certain character _really_ important out of spite. (Don't piss off a writer -- We immortalize shit)
> 
> But this is the end. Truly and fully -- This is it. Cyborg-Mike and Cyborg-Laughlin (SURPRISE! Anyone call that?) are off and married. Michelle and Brianna are off and married and teaching the next generation of Android builders how to do things. Artem and Riley did that thing where they are still friends and they sometimes talk but a lot of time goes in between.
> 
> You have no idea how much I wanted to blab about the Laughlin thing. Some people actually seemed to hate the name and I chose it specifically because it was a name that saw more use a long while back.
> 
> Anyway. 
> 
> It's over now. They can rest. I won't bother people with updates to this series again. I actually wrote the final chapter a few weeks ago but decided to wait until the exact day of the three-year-anniversary. I hope anyone who is still reading this actually liked it.
> 
> I had fun writing it.

**Author's Note:**

> Android Foxy and Ghost in an android shell Mike have returned because people keep forgetting that Fazbear entertainment is a _bad fucking idea_. Quit making animatronics, people, It never ends well.
> 
> We'll see the rest of the crew eventually and we'll see Baby and the rest eventually and I am so excited because I fucking called a Sister Location existing almost two years ago when I start this series.
> 
> I _called_ it.


End file.
